Robots.txt vs noindex
-
I recently started working on a site that has thousands of member pages that are currently robots.txt'd out.
Most pages of the site have 1 to 6 links to these member pages, accumulating into what I regard as something of link juice cul-d-sac.
The pages themselves have little to no unique content or other relevant search play and for other reasons still want them kept out of search.
Wouldn't it be better to "noindex, follow" these pages and remove the robots.txt block from this url type? At least that way Google could crawl these pages and pass the link juice on to still other pages vs flushing it into a black hole.
BTW, the site is currently dealing with a hit from Panda 4.0 last month.
Thanks! Best... Darcy
-
if you add the meta noindex, follow tag , it will keep the page out of the SERP but allows pagerank to flow through them to other pages.
See this interview of Matt Cutts for more info : http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-matt-cutts.shtml
-
Hi Saijo,
Thanks for the response. Do you think that would yield the benefit I'm looking for of recapturing that lost link juice?
Do you think there'd be any downside to the switcheroo from robots.txt to noindex, follow?
Best... Darcy
-
Since you said " The pages themselves have little to no unique content or other relevant search play and for other reasons still want them kept out of search. " I would use meta robots "noindex, follow"
-
HI Lesley,
Thanks for the thoughts. I don't see this as a real option for a number of reasons, including but not limited to that there are 50,000 profiles, most with very little information. The members of this site are 95% busy professionals who aren't trying to advance their career via their profile. So, there'd be some privacy concern and the potential for tens of thousands of low content/highly templated pages. Not really a search dream come true!
Also, converting it into a system where different levels of profile completeness are acknowledged would not really resonate with this community nor would it be near the top of our engineering priorities.
What I really want to get clear on is how best to keep them search invisible while not losing link value into a robots.txt'd black hole. Really just looking for confirmation if, with those goals, "noindex, follow" and remove from robots is the way to go. I'm pretty sure it is, but would like to hear more about that.
Thanks... Darcy
-
I think what I am going to say is going to sound like it is going against the grain, but it really isn't. I have noticed in some places if you want an active community, you reward your members. Look at how moz does their forum, they don't really noindex the pages, but once you hit a point they psuedo drop the nofollow off of your profile link (it could be argued whether they really do). But the point is reward your members that are active. I would set up some automatic noindex tag in the header that grabbed the users post numbers. Then you can noindex all of the spammers and have prominent members shown in the search. If it were me that is how I would do it. I have a PA of 49 on my profile in one forum I regular, I have seen the stats, it is regularly an entry page to the forum. Another member has a 64 on a 93 domain, his is used a lot more than mine for entry as well. Think of it this way, if someone is googling my name, the second result is http://screencast.com/t/jIx7a4hcWV Moz's forum. 2nd search results still get a lot of clicks.
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
-
Noindexing Thin News Content for Panda
We've been suffering under a Panda penalty since Oct 2014. We've completely revamped the site but with this new "slow roll out" nonsense it's incredibly hard to know at what point you have to accept that you haven't done enough yet. We have thousands of news stories going back to 2001, some of which are probably thin and some of which are probably close to other news stories on the internet being articles based on press releases. I'm considering noindexing everything older than a year just in case, however, that seems a bit of overkill. The question is, if I mine the logfiles and only deindex stuff that Google sends no further traffic to after a year could this be seen as trying to game the algo or similar? Also, if the articles are noindexed but still exist, is that enough to escape a Panda penalty or does the page need to be physically gone?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlfredPennyworth0 -
Using folder blocked by robots.txt before uploaded to indexed folder - is that OK?
I have a folder "testing" within my domain which is a folder added to the robots.txt. My web developers use that folder "testing" when we are creating new content before uploading to an indexed folder. So the content is uploaded to the "testing" folder at first (which is blocked by robots.txt) and later uploaded to an indexed folder, yet permanently keeping the content in the "testing" folder. Actually, my entire website's content is located within the "testing" - so same URL structure for all pages as indexed pages, except it starts with the "testing/" folder. Question: even though the "testing" folder will not be indexed by search engines, is there a chance search engines notice that the content is at first uploaded to the "testing" folder and therefore the indexed folder is not guaranteed to get the content credit, since search engines see the content in the "testing" folder, despite the "testing" folder being blocked by robots.txt? Would it be better that I password protecting this "testing" folder? Thx
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi50 -
Google indexing "noindex" pages
1 weeks ago my website expanded with a lot more pages. I included "noindex, follow" on a lot of these new pages, but then 4 days ago I saw the nr of pages Google indexed increased. Should I expect in 2-3 weeks these pages will be properly noindexed and it may just be a delay? It is odd to me that a few days after including "noindex" on pages, that webmaster tools shows an increase in indexing - that the pages were indexed in other words. My website is relatively new and these new pages are not pages Google frequently indexes.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi50 -
Lowercase VS. Uppercase Canonical tags?
Hi MOZ, I was hoping that someone could help shed some light on an issue I'm having with URL structure and the canonical tag. The company I work for is a distributor of electrical products and our E-commerce site is structured so that our URL's (specifically, our product detail page URL's) include a portion (the part #) that is all uppercase (e.g: buy/OEL-Worldwide-Industries/AFW-PG-10-10). The issue is that we have just recently included a canonical tag in all of our product detail pages and the programmer that worked on this project has every canonical tag in lowercase instead of uppercase. Now, in GWT, I'm seeing over 20,000-25,000 "duplicate title tags" or "duplicate descriptions". Is this an issue? Could this issue be resolved by simply changing the canonical tag to reflect the uppercase URL's? I'm not too well versed in canonical tags and would love a little insight. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GalcoIndustrial0 -
On Page vs Off Page - Which Has a Greater Effect on Rankings?
Hi Mozzers, My site will be migrating to a new domain soon, and I am not sure how to spend my time. Should I be optimizing our content for keywords, improving internal linking, and writing new content - or should I be doing link building for our current domain (or the new one)? Is there a certain ratio that determines rankings which can help me prioritize these to-dos?, such as 70:30 in favor of link-building? Thanks for any help you can offer!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W0 -
Panda Updates - robots.txt or noindex?
Hi, I have a site that I believe has been impacted by the recent Panda updates. Assuming that Google has crawled and indexed several thousand pages that are essentially the same and the site has now passed the threshold to be picked out by the Panda update, what is the best way to proceed? Is it enough to block the pages from being crawled in the future using robots.txt, or would I need to remove the pages from the index using the meta noindex tag? Of course if I block the URLs with robots.txt then Googlebot won't be able to access the page in order to see the noindex tag. Anyone have and previous experiences of doing something similar? Thanks very much.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ianmcintosh0 -
Subdirectory vs. Subdomain
I work for a large franchise organization that is weighing the pros and cons of using subdomains versus subdirectories for our franchisee locations. What are the pros and cons of each approach?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Glassdoctordfw0 -
Universal Search vs Local Organic
Hi, My web site has high rankings in universal SERP's. However, in my city organic search the competitors’ web sites that even don’t show up in universal Serp’s have higher rankings than mine. Not sure what I’m doing wrong. Thanks for any insight.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Zlhe0