Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Do internal links from non-indexed pages matter?

    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.

    Do internal links from non-indexed pages matter?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4
    6
    2569
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • Blink-SEO
      Blink-SEO last edited by

      Hi everybody! Here's my question.

      After a site migration, a client has seen a big drop in rankings. We're trying to narrow down the issue. It seems that they have lost around 15,000 links following the switch, but these came from pages that were blocked in the robots.txt file. I was wondering if there was any research that has been done on the impact of internal links from no-indexed pages.

      Would be great to hear your thoughts!

      Sam

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Dr-Pete
        Dr-Pete Staff @Blink-SEO last edited by

        I assume these are pretty deep in the site structure, so I don't think those "links" being reported are very powerful or important. Some people claim that, since PageRank is recursive, you don't want to cut off paths, but when the paths are deep I've rarely seen any evidence to support this. A big, bloated index full of thin content, especially content available on other sites, is a much bigger danger.

        I would not recommend using both a NOINDEX and a rel=canonical on these pages. It's a mixed signal, and that can cause Google to ignore one or both signals (and at their choosing, not yours). I think NOINDEX is fine here. I've built structures like this for things like event websites (where we index the main event but NOINDEX all of the cities/dates, because they change so often) and have never seen any major issues. Actually, in one notable case, even before Panda came along, the site's rankings improved measurably.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • Blink-SEO
          Blink-SEO last edited by

          Hi Pete! Sorry about the delay.

          The site is https://www.holidayhypermarket.co.uk/, and the non-indexed pages are products such as:

          https://www.holidayhypermarket.co.uk/destinations/greece/zante/laganas/36695/tzante-hotel?searchId=6079233&holidayId=2525188

          These are noindexed as they tend to have syndicated content.

          Thanks!

          Dr-Pete 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Dr-Pete
            Dr-Pete Staff last edited by

            Blocked pages are generally not going to pass internal link equity, but the impact of this depends a lot on your site structure. If these were deep pages at the end of paths and your site nav covers major/ranking pages, it shouldn't matter too much. If these pages were in the middle of paths, you could be causing serious problems.

            There's also the question of whether these pages themselves (the blocked ones) were getting inbound links or were themselves ranking for some of these terms.

            Unfortunately, at this scope, it's really hard to speak in generalities. Can you give us a sense of what these pages are and why they were blocked? How large is the site overall?

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • Keszi
              Keszi last edited by

              Hi Sam,

              If the pages that you are talking have been blocked by robots.txt I do not think they would be in any way beneficial. In our case (because of a development made back in 2009 - which still wasn't corrected) we have pages that are noindex, follow. And I have seen that some anchor texts used for internal linking still bring value to the landing pages.

              I hope this helped, Keszi

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • Alick300
                Alick300 last edited by

                Hi,

                I can't say about any research has been done on this topic or not. First I would like to quote whatt moz says about internal linking  "Internal links are most useful for establishing site architecture and spreading link juice (URLs are also essential)."

                I would like to break into two parts

                1> If page/pages linked from blocked pages it means crawler won't find linked pages because pages are blocked from robots.txt this hinders their ability to get pages listed in the search engines' indices. I presume these pages blocked in robots.txt before migration so this could not be reason

                2> Link Juice won't flow because it is blocked & it is blocked earlier too (before migration) so this also could not be the reason.

                *** During migration website does lose ranking if website does not properly redirected so please check whether you followed best practice for migration or not by checking below URL

                http://moz.com/blog/web-site-migration-guide-tips-for-seos

                Thanks

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • 1 / 1
                • First post
                  Last post

                Got a burning SEO question?

                Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                Start my free trial


                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.

                • See all categories

                Related Questions

                • hjsand

                  Rankings rise after improving internal linking - then drop again

                  I'm working on a large scale publishing site. I can increase search rankings almost immediately by improving internal linking to targeted pages, sometimes by 40 positions but after a day or two these same rankings drop down again, not always as low as before but significantly lower than their highest position. My theory is that the uplift generated by the internal linking is subsequently mitigated by other algorithmic factors relating to content quality or site performance or is this unlikely? Does anyone else have experience of this phenomenon or any theories?

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hjsand
                  1
                • BeckyKey

                  Too many on page links

                  Hi I know previously it was recommended to stick to under 100 links on the page, but I've run a crawl and mine are over this now with 130+ How important is this now? I've read a few articles to say it's not as crucial as before. Thanks!

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey
                  1
                • Chemometec

                  Do I need to re-index the page after editing URL?

                  Hi, I had to edit some of the URLs. But, google is still showing my old URL in search results for certain keywords, which ofc get 404. By crawling with ScremingFrog it gets me 301 'page not found' and still giving old URLs. Why is that? And do I need to re-index pages with new URLs? Is 'fetch as Google' enough to do that or any other advice? Thanks a lot, hope the topic will help to someone else too. Dusan

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chemometec
                  0
                • friendoffood

                  Pages are Indexed but not Cached by Google. Why?

                  Here's an example: I get a 404 error for this: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.qjamba.com/restaurants-coupons/ferguson/mo/all But a search for qjamba restaurant coupons gives a clear result as does this: site:http://www.qjamba.com/restaurants-coupons/ferguson/mo/all What is going on?  How can this page be indexed but not in the Google cache? I should make clear that the page is not showing up with any kind of error in webmaster tools, and Google has been crawling pages just fine.  This particular page was fetched by Google yesterday with no problems, and even crawled again twice today by Google  Yet, no cache.

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | friendoffood
                  2
                • theLotter

                  Multiple Internal links to same destinations

                  My company is redoing our homepage and there will be 4 links to our main play pages (5 games).  2 in the menu and 2 within the content. I was thinking I should no follow one of the links on the homepage + 1 in the menu so that we don't have link dilution from having multiple internal links to the same destination within 1 page. Does this make sense? Any downside of this or suggestions of a solution that may be more effective? Thanks!

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | theLotter
                  0
                • fablau

                  Are pages with a canonical tag indexed?

                  Hello here, here are my questions for you related to the canonical tag: 1. If I put online a new webpage with a canonical tag pointing to a different page, will this new page be indexed by Google and will I be able to find it in the index? 2. If instead I apply the canonical tag to a page already in the index, will this page be removed from the index? Thank you in advance for any insights! Fabrizio

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau
                  0
                • Alex-Harford

                  Do 404 pages pass link juice? And best practices...

                  Last year Google said bad links to 404 pages wouldn't hurt your site. Could that still be the case in light of recent Google updates to try and combat spammy links and negative SEO? Can links to 404 pages benefit a website and pass link juice? I'd assume at the very least that any link juice will pass through links FROM the 404 page? Many websites have great 404 pages that get linked to: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=http%3A%2F%2Fretardzone.com%2F404 - that was the first of four I checked from the "60 Really Cool...404 Pages" that actually returned the 404 HTTP Status! So apologies if you find the word 'retard' offensive. According to Open Site Explorer it has a decent Page Authority and number of backlinks - but it doesn't show in Google's SERPs. I'd never do it, but if you have a particularly well-linked to 404 page, is there an argument for giving it 200 OK Status? Finally, what are the best practices regarding 404s and address bar links? For example, if
                  www.examplesite.com/3rwdfs returns a 404 error, should I make that redirect to
                  www.examplesite.com/404 or leave it as is? Redirecting to www.examplesite.com/404 might not be user-friendly as people won't be able to correct the URL in the address bar. But if I have a great  404 page that people link to, I don't want links going to loads of random pages do I? Is either way considered best practice? If I did a 301 redirect I guess it would send the wrong signal to the crawlers? Should I use a 302 redirect, or even a 304 Not Modified redirect?

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alex-Harford
                  1
                • rball1

                  Increasing Internal Links But Avoiding a Link Farm

                  I'm looking to create a page about Widgets and all of the more specific names for Widgets we sell: ABC Brand Widgets, XYZ Brand Widgets, Big Widgets, Small Widgets, Green Widgets, Blue Widgets, etc. I'd like my Widget page to give a brief explanation about each kind of Widget with a link deeper into my site that gives more detail and allows you to purchase. The problem is I have a lot of Widgets and this could get messy: ABC Green Widgets, Small XYZ Widgets, many combinations. I can see my Widget page teetering on being a link farm if I start throwing in all of these combos. So where should I stop? How much do I do? I've read more than 100 links on a page being considered a link farm, is that a hardline number or a general guideline?

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rball1
                  0

                Get started with Moz Pro!

                Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                Start my free trial
                Products
                • Moz Pro
                • Moz Local
                • Moz API
                • Moz Data
                • STAT
                • Product Updates
                Moz Solutions
                • SMB Solutions
                • Agency Solutions
                • Enterprise Solutions
                • Digital Marketers
                Free SEO Tools
                • Domain Authority Checker
                • Link Explorer
                • Keyword Explorer
                • Competitive Research
                • Brand Authority Checker
                • Local Citation Checker
                • MozBar Extension
                • MozCast
                Resources
                • Blog
                • SEO Learning Center
                • Help Hub
                • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                • How-to Guides
                • Moz Academy
                • API Docs
                About Moz
                • About
                • Team
                • Careers
                • Contact
                Why Moz
                • Case Studies
                • Testimonials
                Get Involved
                • Become an Affiliate
                • MozCon
                • Webinars
                • Practical Marketer Series
                • MozPod
                Connect with us

                Contact the Help team

                Join our newsletter
                Moz logo
                © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                • Accessibility
                • Terms of Use
                • Privacy

                Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.