How to change noindex to index?
-
Hey,
I've recently upgraded to a pro SEOmoz account and have realised i have 14574 issues to do with 'blocked by meta-robot' and that 'This page is being kept out of the search engine indexes by the meta tag , which may have a value of "noindex", keeping this page out of the index.'
How can i change this so my pages get indexed?
I read somewhere that i need to change my privacy settings but that thread was 3 years old and now the WP Dashboard has updated..
Please let me know
Many thanks, Jamie
P.s Im using WordPress 3.5
And i have the XML sitemap plugin
And i have no idea where to look for this robots.txt file..
-
Answered below as well, but wanted to drop this here in case anyone else is looking. WP has changed the location of what used to be "Privacy" under settings. The functionality (which blocks search engines from your wordpress installation) is now under Settings->Reading
[Screenshot](Hi Mark Did you find it? I struggled too for a bit, but it's moved to Settings->Reading See this screenshot -Dan)
-Dan
-
Hi Mark
Did you find it? I struggled too for a bit, but it's moved to Settings->Reading
-Dan
-
Just updated it to this: http://gyazo.com/4a8a008055abbd563f96bf29b6b259a6.png?1357651763
And then checked my page sources and they're still 'noindex' - why can't i correct this?!
-
Just installed it and now its added this field into my settings>Reading
http://gyazo.com/0be601793fc1cb866d918ea61e7d8ec1.png?1357649141
What do i need to change to allow it to index all my pages?
(Don't want to type something in that will block all my pages )
-
Just asked the WordPress Forums and one of their reply was to install this plugin: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-robots-txt/
Just seems to add the privacy tab again so i can set the settings to: I would like my blog to be visible to everyone, including search engines (like Google, Bing, Technorati) and archivers
Like you first stated
Will install it now and see how it goes
-
It could be that the older wordpress had a setting that this new version has decided to ignore. This is typical of programmers!
The next possibility is to look in the database, but the options part of the database is hard to read.
Another idea is to look in the code of the the theme and hack it, so it is permanently index, follow or just remove that altogether.
Maybe someone else has a better idea?
Alan
-
If i remember correctly my pages were still not being indexed before i installed the all in one SEO pack.
Here is my settings for the SEO pack: http://gyazo.com/6b4dddacb307bdacfdd7741894e0356b.png?1357647136
As you can see they are as you explained.
Any other ideas?
-
Yes, I would have them indexed in that case too.
I think it is the categories that are noindex.
I think this is an 'All in one SEO pack' adjustable feature.
In the setup for that, look for a checkbox:
"use noindex for categories"
uncheck that if it is checked.
If that isn't it, I don't know the answer
-
Thanks again for your reply Alan.
Currently the site is still in its final stages of development and once my automated system is finally built and implemented then I won't need to be changing any of the index pages except posting a few blogs once in a week or so.
So i think it would benefit me more to have each of my index pages getting indexed but then again I'm not sure on how to go about allowing them to be indexed due to WordPress' update.
My plugins are all highly downloaded and i use the 'All in one SEO pack' - if that may be the problem? I've gone through all the settings and the noindex buttons are all anticked.
Perhaps it could be the initial theme i used?
-
Thank you Mark
Nice looking site!
Your front page is index, follow.
Index pages are noindex, follow
Final pages are index, follow
I do something very close to this on my site.
Often, index pages are useless to searchers, because the index page changes so quickly that by the time the info gets into a search result, the information is no longer on that page, and the searcher will either just click away, cursing you and your site, or they will go looking through a few index pages and then curse you when they can't find what they wanted.
So I agree with the way you're doing that - if it is the case that the content changes quickly. If the index pages are just collectors of groups of items, then index, follow would be better, provided that you have enough text on the page to make it worthwhile.
As to how to make that happen, it isn't obvious.
I need to upgrade some of my sites to 3.5.
It could be that you have a plugin or a "custom field" that sets the index follow.
I suggest you edit a post and a page and scroll down to see if you have a field that handles it, such as "robotsmeta" that is set to "noindex,follow" for those pages
-
Hi Alan, thanks for your quick response.
My website is: www.FifaCoinStore.com
Here is a printscreen of my settings: http://gyazo.com/0cd3d21c5ec1797873a5c7cacc85a588.png?1357600674
I believe since the WordPress 3.5 update they have removed this privacy option which is why i can't seem to find it. I read this page from WordPress on it: http://codex.wordpress.org/Settings_Reading_Screen
Or am i just looking in the wrong place?
Thanks again
-
Hello Mark.
Please send me a bitly shortened link to your website so I can see what you are seeing
It probably isn't your robots file.
First try this.
In the Admin section, you should see "Settings" on the left navigation
Click that and you should see "Privacy"
Click that and you should see two radio buttons
<label for="blog-public">I would like my blog to be visible to everyone, including search engines (like Google, Bing, Technorati) and archivers</label>
<label for="blog-norobots">I would like to block search engines, but allow normal visitors</label>
Obviously, choose the top one and save it.
Then, refresh your front page or inner pages and look in the code to see if it still says noindex
If you have a cache, you will need to flush it.
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
-
Migration + Change of Address Tool used - previous site de-indexed!!
OMG disaster! Recently migrated my site womencycles.com to moonrise.health. Painstakingly went through each URL manually to map out redirects, notified Google via change of address tool. Bam. My old website has disappeared from Google and my new site has thus lost all it's organic (i.e. redirected) traffic. I don't get it. I think I have done everything by the book, but it seems my old site has disappeared and no authority or link juice has been passed to my new site by the 301s, as the new site isn't ranking either. Some examples: https://www.google.com/search?q=women+cycles&oq=women+cycles&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i65j69i61l2j69i60.1834j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 'women cycles' previous position 1
Technical SEO | | tikitaka
https://www.google.com/search?q=chaffed+vagina&oq=chaffed+vagina&aqs=chrome..69i57.2370j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 - chaffed vagina, previous position 1 https://www.google.com/search?q=how+long+does+it+take+turmeric+to+shrink+fibroids&oq=how+long+does+it+take+turmeric+to+shrink+fibroids&aqs=chrome..69i57.1355j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 - how long does it take turmeric to shrink fibroids, previous position 1. Biggest traffic source pages were: https://womencycles.com/blog/top-10-home-remedies-that-claim-to-tighten-vagina-do-they-work/
https://womencycles.com/blog/sore-breasts-after-period-has-finished/
https://womencycles.com/blog/what-is-vaginal-gas-queefing/
https://womencycles.com/blog/tired-during-ovulation/
https://womencycles.com/blog/how-to-get-rid-of-saggy-vag-without-surgery/
https://womencycles.com/blog/vagina-chafing-causes-treatments-to-prevent-it-from-coming-back/
https://womencycles.com/blog/vaginal-dryness-during-pregnancy/ New blog articles on new site, with 301 redirect in place, but not ranking Screenshot shows my search traffic for my new site. Site migrated 13 June. Any ideas anyone??!Screenshot 2022-06-28 at 13.27.41.png0 -
Pages are Indexed but not Cached by Google. Why?
Hello, We have magento 2 extensions website mageants.com since 1 years google every 15 days cached my all pages but suddenly last 15 days my websites pages not cached by google showing me 404 error so go search console check error but din't find any error so I have cached manually fetch and render but still most of pages have same 404 error example page : - https://www.mageants.com/free-gift-for-magento-2.html error :- http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.mageants.com%2Ffree-gift-for-magento-2.html&rlz=1C1CHBD_enIN803IN804&oq=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.mageants.com%2Ffree-gift-for-magento-2.html&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.1569j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 so have any one solutions for this issues
Technical SEO | | vikrantrathore0 -
Google Bot Noindex
If a site has the tag, can it still be flagged for duplicate content?
Technical SEO | | MayflyInternet0 -
Why are my images not being indexed?
I have submitted an image sitemap with over 2,000 images yet only about 35 have been indexed. Could you please help me understand why Google is not indexing my images? www.creative-calendars.com
Technical SEO | | nicole20140 -
Do Sitespect links get indexed?
I put a link on one of my websites using sitespect because the next release is not for a few weeks. The reason for the link is to pass domain authority (SEO Juice) to the linked site. In my next release I will add the link in the actual code, but am hoping that from now till then google will crawl and index this link. So the question is, will google crawl and index links adding to webpages via sitespect? Here is the code: | * [http://www.](<a class=)yourdomain.com" class="" >YourDomain |
Technical SEO | | AlyssaN
| | | Link to Sitespect: http://www.sitespect.com/0 -
How to Stop Google from Indexing Old Pages
We moved from a .php site to a java site on April 10th. It's almost 2 months later and Google continues to crawl old pages that no longer exist (225,430 Not Found Errors to be exact). These pages no longer exist on the site and there are no internal or external links pointing to these pages. Google has crawled the site since the go live, but continues to try and crawl these pages. What are my next steps?
Technical SEO | | rhoadesjohn0 -
Removing some of the indexed pages from my website
I am planning to remove some of the webpages from my website and these webpages are already indexed with search engine. Is there any way by which I need to inform search engine that these pages are no more available.
Technical SEO | | ArtiKalra0 -
How to tell if PDF content is being indexed?
I've searched extensively for this, but could not find a definitive answer. We recently updated our website and it contains links to about 30 PDF data sheets. I want to determine if the text from these PDFs is being archived by search engines. When I do this search http://bit.ly/rRYJPe (google - site:www.gamma-sci.com and filetype:pdf) I can see that the PDF urls are getting indexed, but does that mean that their content is getting indexed? I have read in other posts/places that if you can copy text from a PDF and paste it that means Google can index the content. When I try this with PDFs from our site I cannot copy text, but I was told that these PDFs were all created from Word docs, so they should be indexable, correct? Since WordPress has you upload PDFs like they are an image could this be causing the problem? Would it make sense to take the time and extract all of the PDF content to html? Thanks for any assistance, this has been driving me crazy.
Technical SEO | | zazo0