Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Should i remove the nofollow from mediawiki?
-
We have a website which uses mediawiki for public documentation. The moz crawler keeps nagging us that 50% of our sites have the nofollow-metatag. (And noindex for that matter). This is information pages and such in mediawiki.
From a SEO perspective: Should we remove these tags? I assume they probably do not hurt?
If we shouldn't remove the tags: Is there any way to get moz to ignore these pages so we can get rid of this "noise" in the moz-panel?
-
The nofollows are automatically created by mediawiki.
I'll try to find a solution for removing them i guess. Thank you for your input.
-
Ahh ok I see now.
Even though you have a nofollow on your link in the navigation from your url to your wiki, the pages will still be indexed! Even if the links are not being followed by search engines they are still being indexed by them-just want to make that clear. Also, it's important to note that even if Google reads a nofollow tag they still have an option to follow it anyway. Because of the open source platform you are using, I'm not sure if there's a way to stop the crawl from indexing the link between your url and your wiki. That might take some fancy foot work. That would be the only way to get the nofollow percentage removed…but you really don't want your wiki pages to not be indexed anyway.
Moz is reflecting what the crawl bots see…such as Google. You can't tell it to not show you certain things unless you alter your code, .htaccss, or robots files to change the way the site is being crawled.
As I stated earlier…having a lot of nofollows doesn't necessarily hurt your SEO, but it will not bring you the benefits of followed links that pass link juice and page rank.
I understand it's hard to see the real issues to address when you are flooded with this other stuff, but I'm not sure you have many other options unless you want to remove the nofollows.
Just curious…why do you use so many nofollows anyway? Or is it automatically generated by wiki?
-
Hi Adam.
Thank you for the good replies.
The url to the wiki: http://docs.host1.no/wiki
Url to main page: https://host1.no
"Complaints" from the moz.com-engine:
#1: (mediawiki-problem)
Crawl Issue Found: Use of 'nofollow' Tag
49% of site pages are tagged with the nofollow META attribute#2: (mediawiki-problem)
Crawl Issue Found: 404 Errors
8% of site pages served 404 errors during the last crawlExample of sites Moz.com complains about noindex/nofollow on:http://docs.host1.no/w/index.php?title=Cloud1&action=infohttp://docs.host1.no/w/index.php?title=Cloud1&action=historyhttp://docs.host1.no/w/index.php?title=Cloud1&action=editAnd so on.I assume google won't mind this as it's pages that really don't need to be indexed. But it would be nice to get moz' crawler to ignore these errors as they might mask other actual problems by the amount of errors i get. When i get 1000+ errors from this it's hard to find the real problems.
-
I'm still not entirely sure about how your site is structured but I'll give it a shot…
Firstly, the noindex tag is only for pages. It tells the crawl to not index an entire page and stops it from ranking. That tag is meant for the section of the page. Nofollow tags are found within the link and are meant to stop the transfer of page authority…so you are essentially telling the crawler bots that the links are external and/or not totally relevant/trustworthy. Nofollow shouldn't be used really on internal links within your site pages because you want to spread the page rank and authority and receive the SEO benefits of that.
It's probably telling you there is a problem because you are essentially stopping the flow of link juice within your site and from sharing page rank and authority with other trustworthy/relevant sites.
So why have you made them nofollow in the first place? Maybe you can assess why and where to use the nofollow so that it is beneficial. I guess it's not necessarily a "problem" …but you are not receiving any possible benefits from limiting your nofollow links.
Hope that helps!
-
The links within the site (within mediawiki to be specific) is noindex + nofollow. This due to it being information-sites and such in mediawiki.
Not sure what to do with them, but it's fairly annoying that moz lists it as a problem with "1000 internal links having nofollow" if it's not really a problem at all.
-
Are you saying that your sites are noindex/nofollow or are the links within the site nofollow?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Should I Change My Blog Permalinks to Remove The Date
Hi All Thank you in advance for any help. Last year a website was moved to multisite and the permalinks for the blog posts were changed to include a category, the year, the month and day. As a result most of the page URL's are flagged as too long. A number of the pages are receiving good traffic, so my question is whether just to leave them as they are or to change the permalinks? My gut feeling is to take the short term hit and change the permalinks, but I thought I'd take the advice of the forum before doing so. Many Thanks
On-Page Optimization | Dec 6, 2024, 9:02 AM | DigitalProgress2 -
Unsolved I have lost SEO Ranking while removing www from domain
I have lost search SEO ranking for 4-6 core keywords while removing www from domain switch.
On-Page Optimization | Jan 20, 2024, 1:18 PM | velomate
Referring domain: https://cashforscrapcarsydney.com.au/ Earlier the domain was in the format: https://www.cashforscrapcarsydney.com.au/ But when I checked the search result, search engines had not yet crawled to the new format. Let me know if the server change or any algorithm hit might cause it. Also please share the feedback on - does removing www from the domain losses keyword ranking. Helpful replies are needed.0 -
Site name in page title - leave it or remove it?
Hi all, Recently came across some authority blog (quicksprout to be precise) which stated that apart from main page, contact page, about us and some other generic pages, site name should be removed as it might produce duplicate content. example "How to blog | Example Site name" This mostly is the issue with tags and categories pages as it shows on Moz issues. Is that really a problem and site name should be taken off them? Thank you.
On-Page Optimization | Nov 17, 2019, 6:27 PM | Optimal_Strategies1 -
How to remove subdomains in a clean way?
Hello, I have a main domain example.com where I have my main content and then I created 3 subdomains one.example.com, two.example.com and three.example.com I think the low ranking of my subdomains is affecting the ranking of my main domain, the one I care the most. So, I decided to get rid of the subdomains. The thing is that only for one.example.com I could transfer the content to my main domain and create 301 redirects. For the other two subdomains I cannot integrate the content in my main domain as it doesn't make sense. Whats the cleanest way to make them dissapear? (just put a redirect to my main domain even if the content is not the same) or just change the robots to "noindex" and put a 404 page in the index of each subdomain. I want to use the way that will harm the least the performance with Google. Regards!
On-Page Optimization | Aug 31, 2015, 10:21 AM | Gaolga0 -
Nofollow on the logo
Hi I'm working on this site: www.nobelcom.com and on the logo I have a rel=nofollow. Do you think I should keep it, and is so way, or I should remove the nofollow (why?)
On-Page Optimization | May 4, 2015, 11:33 AM | Silviu0 -
How do I remove a Canonical URL Tag?
Some of my report cards say I have too many canonical URL tags. However, there is no information no how to delete one. Can someone give me a link or explain? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | Apr 29, 2013, 5:42 PM | dealblogger0 -
How to properly remove pages and a category from Google's index
I want to remove this category http://www.webdesign.org/web-design-news-all/ and all the pages in that category (e.g. http://www.webdesign.org/web-design-news-all/7386.html ) from Google's index. I used the following string in the "Reomval URS" section in Google Webmaster Tools: http://www.webdesign.org/web-design-news-all/* is that correct or I better use http://www.webdesign.org/web-design-news-all/ ? Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | Sep 20, 2012, 9:43 AM | VinceWicks0 -
My nofollow link is showing as a 302\. Is this OK?
My nofollow link is showing as a 302. Is this OK? Not looking to pass any juice along but don't want to be penalized either. Thanks Buhrly
On-Page Optimization | Jun 7, 2011, 1:59 PM | Buhrly0