Any SEO effect(s) / impact of Meta No Cache?
-
Hi SEOMoz Guys,
Hope you guys are doing well.
I've been searching online and bumped into this archived page (http://www.seomoz.org/qa/view/34982/meta-nocache-affect-ranking). I would like to get an updated take on this issue whether or not the meta no cache code on a page bears negative/positive or no SEO impact / effect.
<meta http-equiv="Pragma" content="no-cache" />
<meta http-equiv="Cache-Control" content="no-cache"/>
Thanks!
Steve
-
Alan, thank you for this response. I was completely off base thinking of the noarchive tag and that is what my response was geared towards. Your response is dead on, and I agree, adding the noarchive tag should be fine but it may send a weak signal to Google your site may be hiding something.
-
I just had a read, about the noarchive, I found where http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/017128.html
Where it is claimed that Matt Cutts has said there is no penalty, BUT, if you have spammy signals it will be another signal.
so there is some truth in it, but only if you ae already a bit spammy.
I also found this video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhrZKejdmEEMatt mentioned it here. if you have been hacked, they may show he hacked page only to googlebot, so this can not be checked they also add noarchive.
so if they suspect a hack, and you have noarchive, you may have a problem, but he also stated in anouther videio that they will tell you you hhave a problem. -
Yes I am. I think you are talking of
where the syntax steve posted is for caching in the browser and proxy servers.
-
Hi Ryan,
Thanks for citing another source. I'm actually doing a site audit for a client and noticed that most, if not all, of their pages have the meta no cache on the script code. To be honest, it is the first time I've come across this and was unsure if it would have any SEO impact.
Thanks again!
Steve
-
Alan, I just want to make sure we are talking about the same thing here. I believe the original question refers to cache as it appears on Google search results pages. Based on your responses it seems as if you are referring to web page cache on the site's web server. Am I mistaken?
-
Why would you take it as less trustworthy.
simply having dynamic content is reason enouth to have no cache. no-caching is widly used, you can no cache all or part of a page if anything i would say the oppersite, if you are cached you may get indexed less often.
for example you should not cache a page with sensitive data, and allow someone to click the back button at a later time and get the data.
Search results is anouther example, I am sure that google and Bing do not cache their search results.
News papers is another.
-
no it would not have any affect, no-cache is a requirement for many sites that have dynamic content. Why would SE's want to penalize you for having dynamic content.
Caching does give you faster loading times, but as someone posted from google, you have to be very slow to get flaged for slow load times and less then 1% of pages do, even then it is a small signal.
-
I am not aware of any negative SEO impact to adding the no-cache meta tag. The answer provided in the Q&A link you shared seems accurate and complete.
The Google page which discusses using no-cache clearly states "The page will still be crawled and indexed by Google, but users will not see a Cached link in the search results."
With the above understood, I would also ask the same question from the Q&A response....why would you want to no cache your page? The only valid reasons I can think of are for a page being developed or otherwise under constant change. We don't know all aspects of Google's algorithm but I would take a non-cached page as less trustworthy then a cached page.
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
-
Content that's behind CSS..
For content that's been loaded onto the page.. but it requires a click for it to be revealed.. as in a slider, or a tab, to save space or for a page's organization.. what are your thoughts on Google counting or weighting this content? It would make sense for Google to give it partial or no weighting as if Google attributes the content to being there, its confusion for the user to land on the page and have to find it/click around to find it.. Sorry if this is an obvious question to SEOs.. I've always assumed as long as it was loaded, it'd be mostly counted.. but I'm beginning to doubt my assumption. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | speedcommerce0 -
Meta tag keywords with the same words in them.
I'm updating some older pages and was wondering about potential penalties from having keywords that start with the same phrase. It's a geographic area so there is the "full name" and the abbreviated name. I'd like to have keywords for both. For example: virginia beach, va beach, virginia beach attraction, virginia beach things to do, va beach attraction, va beach things to do, virginia beach dolphins tour, va beach dolphins tour Is that spammy? I understand they don't have the same weight as they used to but I'd like to optimize for them anyway since I'm redoing some things. Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | recoil0 -
Google finding my meta descriptions
I recently had my site redone (about a year ago). Since then google has not been using my meta descriptions much and more so using the descriptions within my site. Is there a reason for this? An example would be http://www.waikoloavacationrentals.com/vrp/unit/kolea-14/
On-Page Optimization | | RobDalton0 -
SEO HTML: Header tags
A few of quick SEO questions regarding header tags: More than one tag per page. If there is more than one tag on a page: are both taken into consideration and what if they contain the same keyword? Eg on the page: http://en.emilea.be/childrens-clothes/molo/boys/cardigans-and-sweaters/ MoloBoysCardigans & sweaters ... Molo childrens clothes Is the 2nd considered when indexing the page? Since both tags contain the same keyword (but in different context) is this a SEO plus or minus? Nested tags inside header tags. I presume the nested tags are omitted, but if there is no white space between the tags are these concatenated? <span tag='molo'>Molo<span tag='boys'>Boys<span tag='cardigans-and-sweaters'>Cardigans & sweaters</span tag='cardigans-and-sweaters'></span tag='boys'></span tag='molo'> How is the above header processed? MoloBoysCardigans & sweaters
On-Page Optimization | | Webxtrakt
or
2) Molo Boys Cardigans & sweaters Order of header tags.
How important is the order of header tags and how do they influence the following content. F.ex. if the top part of the page contains multiple tags and the middle part contains 1-2 tags. Does this affect the importance of the tags and would it be better to use tags above? Thanks in advance.0 -
Tech/Development Pricing ??
Hi I've submitted some site change request to a clients dev team and they have got back with a rather large quote thats left me gobsmacked, so i want to run it by any of you to get your feedback ? Creating/integrating a dynamic xml site map @ £3450 Fixing Crawl Errors & Warning reported by Moz report (i..e adding canonicalisation tag to each page to deal with dupe content and a few other small/misc items) @ £4850 Setting up/enabling ecom tracking in Analytics @ £910 Setting up 1 events based goal in analytics @ £490 Are these prices even plausible ? Cheers Dan
On-Page Optimization | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Left Nav / SEO
We are in the middle of a redesign and would love to get rid of our left navigation. It's currently full of SEO rich categories and has been the same for 10+ years. Our programmers think removing the left navigation will have no impact on our SEO. As SEO's, do you agree with this?
On-Page Optimization | | EileenCleary0 -
Meta Descriptions - Duplicate Content?
I have created a Meta Description for a page that is optimized for SERPS. If I also put this exact content on my page for my readers, would this be considered duplicate content? The meta description and content will be listed on the same page with the same URL. Thanks for your help.
On-Page Optimization | | tuckjames0