Can I use a "no index, follow" command in a robot.txt file for a certain parameter on a domain?
-
I have a site that produces thousands of pages via file uploads. These pages are then linked to by users for others to download what they have uploaded.
Naturally, the client has blocked the parameter which precedes these pages in an attempt to keep them from being indexed. What they did not consider, was they these pages are attracting hundreds of thousands of links that are not passing any authority to the main domain because they're being blocked in robots.txt
Can I allow google to follow, but NOT index these pages via a robots.txt file --- or would this have to be done on a page by page basis?
-
Since you have those pages blocked via robots.txt, the bots would never even crawl these pages in theory...which means the Noindex,follow is not helping.
Also, if you do a report on the domain on opensiteexplorer and dig, you should be able to find tons of those links already showing up. So if my site is linking to a page on that site, that page may not be cached/indexed because of the robots.txt exclusion, but that as long as my site is follow, your domain is still getting the credit for the link.
Does that make sense ?
-
Answered my own question.
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
-
Move to new domain using Canonical Tag
At the moment, I am moving from olddomain.com (niche site) to the newdomain.com (multi-niche site). Due to some reasons, I do not want to use 301 right now and planning to use the canonical pointing to the new domain instead. Would Google rank the new site instead of the old site? From what I have learnt, the canonical tag lets Google know that which is the main source of the contents. Thank you very much!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | india-morocco0 -
Need help in de-indexing URL parameters in my website.
Hi, Need some help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ImranZafar
So this is my website _https://www.memeraki.com/ _
If you hover over any of the products, there's a quick view option..that opens up a popup window of that product
That popup is triggered by this URL. _https://www.memeraki.com/products/never-alone?view=quick _
In the URL you can see the parameters "view=quick" which is infact responsible for the pop-up. The problem is that the google and even your Moz crawler is picking up this URL as a separate webpage, hence, resulting in crawl issues, like missing tags.
I've already used the webmaster tools to block the "view" parameter URLs in my website from indexing but it's not fixing the issue
Can someone please provide some insights as to how I can fix this?0 -
"Null" appearing as top keyword in "Content Keywords" under Google index in Google Search Console
Hi, "Null" is appearing as top keyword in Google search console > Google Index > Content Keywords for our site http://goo.gl/cKaQ4K . We do not use "null" as keyword on site. We are not able to find why Google is treating "null" as a keyword for our site. Is anyone facing such issue. Thanks & Regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vivekrathore0 -
No follow vs do follow the how to
Hi Guys, Sorry if this is an ammature question, just wanted to know I noticed a few people talking about no follows and do follows for backlinks. Is there suppose to be some way to set you website up as nofollow and dofollow for backlinks? I noticed a few people saying to make sure that some directories are nofollow, i would like to know if I can set this up for my own site as I'm a bit conscious and paranoid about others that might backlink to my site who have huge spam or negative seo etc? Any insight into this would be much appreciated Thanks all
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | edward-may0 -
When is it recommended to use a self referencing rel "canonical"?
In what type of a situation is it the best type of practice to use a self referencing rel "canonical" tag? Are there particular practices to be cautious of when using a self referencing rel "canonical" tag? I see this practice used mainly with larger websites but I can't find any information that really explains when is a good time to make use of this practice for SEO purposes. Appreciate all feedback. Thank you in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEO_Promenade0 -
Can I reduce number of on page links by just adding "no follow" tags to duplicate links
Our site works on templates and we essentially have a link pointing to the same place 3 times on most pages. The links are images not text. We are over 100 links on our on page attributes, and ranking fairly well for key SERPS our core pages are optimized for. I am thinking I should engage in some on-page link juice sculpting and add some "no follow" tags to 2 of the 3 repeated links. Although that being said the Moz's on page optimizer is not saying I have link cannibalization. Any thoughts guys? Hope this scenario makes sense.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | robertrRSwalters0 -
Negative impact on crawling after upload robots.txt file on HTTPS pages
I experienced negative impact on crawling after upload robots.txt file on HTTPS pages. You can find out both URLs as follow. Robots.txt File for HTTP: http://www.vistastores.com/robots.txt Robots.txt File for HTTPS: https://www.vistastores.com/robots.txt I have disallowed all crawlers for HTTPS pages with following syntax. User-agent: *
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit
Disallow: / Does it matter for that? If I have done any thing wrong so give me more idea to fix this issue.0 -
Questions regarding Google's "improved url handling parameters"
Google recently posted about improving url handling parameters http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/07/improved-handling-of-urls-with.html I have a couple questions: Is it better to canonicalize urls or use parameter handling? Will Google inform us if it finds a parameter issue? Or, should we have a prepare a list of parameters that should be addressed?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0