Robots
-
I have just noticed this in my code
name="robots" content="noindex">
And have noticed some of my keywords have dropped, could this be the reason?
-
It was everypage on the site.
I also noticed the pages that are not indexed no longer, they have no PR, is that expected?
-
Was the homepage one of the pages that included the noindex meta tag?
Even if it was, pages will not all be crawled at the same time or in a particular order. The homepage may have already been crawled before the change was made on your site, your homepage may not have even be crawled at all today if it was visited yesterday for example.
Crawling results can vary hugely based on a number of factors.
-
The only thing that does not make sense to me is if the sitemap was processes today, why is the homepage still indexed?
-
Yes because that is what caused them to take notice of the meta noindex and drop your pages from their search results.
Best of luck with it, feel free to send me a PM if your pages haven't reappeared in Google's search engine over the next few days.
-
Oh! I also noticed that in Webmaster tools that the sitemap was processed today, does that mean Googlebot has visited the website today?
-
Thanks Geoff, will do what you recommended.
I noticed in Google webmaster tools this:
Blocked URLs - 193
Downloaded - 13 hours ago
Status - 200 (success)
-
Hi Gary,
If the pages dropped from Google's index that quickly, then chances are, they will be back again almost as quick. If your website has an XML sitemap, you could try pinging this to the search engines to alert them to revisit your site as soon as possible again.
It's bad luck that the meta tag was inserted and this caused immediate negative effects, but it will be recoverable, and likely your pages should re-enter the index at the same positions as they were prior to today.
The key is to just bring Google's bot back to your website as soon as possible to recrawl, publishing a blog post could do this, creating a backlink from a high traffic site (a forum is a good example for this) are some methods of encouraging this.
Hope that helps.
-
Hi Geoff,
The developer had said it got added this morning when we rolled out a discount feature on our website, I think it was the CMS adding it automatically, however now a lot of the keywords that were ranking top 3 are no longer indexed, is it just bad luck? will Google come back?
-
If you are using a content management system, these additional meta tags can often be controlled within your administration panel.
If the meta tag is hard coded into your website header, this will appearing on every page of your website and will subsequently result in you not having any pages indexed in search engines.
As Ben points out, the noindex directive instructs search engine robots not to index that particular page. It would recommended to address this issue as quickly as possible, especially if you have a high traffic website that is getting crawled frequently.
-
Thanks for your quick reply Ben.
It does not seem to be all my pages that have fallen off, just some, the developer said that it only got added this morning by mistake.
I actually typed in the full URL into Google and it does not appear anymore, I was ranked no.2 for that particular keyword, receiving about 150 click per day, not happy!
-
Actually on second thoughts - YES. Yes it probably is the reason your terms are dropping.
-
Could be.
That's a directive that tells search engines no to include that page in their indexes.
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
-
Using Meta Header vs Robots.txt
Hey Mozzers, I am working on a site that has search-friendly parameters for their faceted navigation, however this makes it difficult to identify the parameters in a robots.txt file. I know that using the robots.txt file is highly recommended and powerful, but I am not sure how to do this when facets are using common words such as sizes. For example, a filtered url may look like www.website.com/category/brand/small.html Brand and size are both facets. Brand is a great filter, and size is very relevant for shoppers, but many products include "small" in the url, so it is tough to isolate that filter in the robots.txt. (I hope that makes sense). I am able to identify problematic pages and edit the Meta Head so I can add on any page that is causing these duplicate issues. My question is, is this a good idea? I want bots to crawl the facets, but indexing all of the facets causes duplicate issues. Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | evan890 -
Robots.txt help
Hi Moz Community, Google is indexing some developer pages from a previous website where I currently work: ddcblog.dev.examplewebsite.com/categories/sub-categories Was wondering how I include these in a robots.txt file so they no longer appear on Google. Can I do it under our homepage GWT account or do I have to have a separate account set up for these URL types? As always, your expertise is greatly appreciated, -Reed
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IceIcebaby0 -
Blocking out specific URLs with robots.txt
I've been trying to block out a few URLs using robots.txt, but I can't seem to get the specific one I'm trying to block. Here is an example. I'm trying to block something.com/cats but not block something.com/cats-and-dogs It seems if it setup my robots.txt as so.. Disallow: /cats It's blocking both urls. When I crawl the site with screaming flog, that Disallow is causing both urls to be blocked. How can I set up my robots.txt to specifically block /cats? I thought it was by doing it the way I was, but that doesn't seem to solve it. Any help is much appreciated, thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Whebb0 -
Why are these results being showed as blocked by robots.txt?
If you perform this search, you'll see all m. results are blocked by robots.txt: http://goo.gl/PRrlI, but when I reviewed the robots.txt file: http://goo.gl/Hly28, I didn't see anything specifying to block crawlers from these pages. Any ideas why these are showing as blocked?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
What content should I block in wodpress with robots.txt?
I need to know if anyone has tips on creating a good robots.txt. I have read a lot of info, but I am just not clear on what I should allow and not allow on wordpress. For example there are pages and posts, then attachments, wp-admin, wp-content and so on. Does anyone have a good robots.txt guideline?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ENSO0 -
New server update + wrong robots.txt = lost SERP rankings
Over the weekend, we updated our store to a new server. Before the switch, we had a robots.txt file on the new server that disallowed its contents from being indexed (we didn't want duplicate pages from both old and new servers). When we finally made the switch, we somehow forgot to remove that robots.txt file, so the new pages weren't indexed. We quickly put our good robots.txt in place, and we submitted a request for a re-crawl of the site. The problem is that many of our search rankings have changed. We were ranking #2 for some keywords, and now we're not showing up at all. Is there anything we can do? Google Webmaster Tools says that the next crawl could take up to weeks! Any suggestions will be much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 9Studios0 -
Why is noindex more effective than robots.txt?
In this post, http://www.seomoz.org/blog/restricting-robot-access-for-improved-seo, it mentions that the noindex tag is more effective than using robots.txt for keeping URLs out of the index. Why is this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Should we block urls like this - domainname/shop/leather-chairs.html?brand=244&cat=16&dir=ascℴ=price&price=1 within the robots.txt?
I've recently added a campaign within the SEOmoz interface and received an alarming number of errors ~9,000 on our eCommerce website. This site was built in Magento, and we are using search friendly url's however most of our errors were duplicate content / titles due to url's like: domainname/shop/leather-chairs.html?brand=244&cat=16&dir=asc&order=price&price=1 and domainname/shop/leather-chairs.html?brand=244&cat=16&dir=asc&order=price&price=4. Is this hurting us in the search engines? Is rogerbot too good? What can we do to cut off bots after the ".html?" ? Any help would be much appreciated 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MonsterWeb280