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
-
SEO for page that is made up of multiple posts
When a page is made up of lots of individual wordpress posts, how should it be handled from an SEO perspective? Should the individual posts be hidden from the search engines and only the page url which contains all the posts collectivity be indexed? Page in question below: http://teammateworld.com/case-studies/ Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | Rich_H0 -
What software do you use/work within for SEO?
Hi, Our site was put together in Dreamweaver and I'm not great at using html so I use Contribute to modify the info on our site. There are some limitations using Contribute so I'm wondering what other people use. Thanks for your input!
On-Page Optimization | | karlseidel0 -
Google Panda This Past Weekend Impact
I understood that Google was implementing a major Panda refresh this past weekend. Did it happen? Anyone notice any impacts? What changed?
On-Page Optimization | | lbohen0 -
SEO- SLIDER
Are sliders bad for SEO. I have a slider that uses HTML elements. The text in the slider is in the source code; however, the words are surround by unreadable code. Give me an example of good SEO friendly sliders for wordpress. Who uses what and why?
On-Page Optimization | | JML11790 -
SEO Change/Version Control
Hi. Can anyone suggest apps that might be applied for SEO change/version control? I've tried using Excel and Word in the past but both fall short when dealing with multiple client sites. Nothing suitable pops up so far. Specifically I want to be able to log any on-page changes that might impact SEO for historical analysis and possible roll-back (manual) eg change date, page title, headings, url, anchor text, alt image txt, body copy etc. The ability to have one view that can be filtered in various ways including by client and by url would be ideal. Maybe this is something SEOmoz is considering for Pro campaign management? Surely there's demand... Thanks Andy
On-Page Optimization | | Bluesnapper0 -
Research on what improves CTR on meta data?
Does anyone know of any research done to show what improves CTR for title tags & descriptions in search results? I know general best practices, but am looking for any available studies
On-Page Optimization | | nicole.healthline0 -
Facebook Comments for SEO
Hi, I read few opinions over the potential value of implementing Facebook Comments on internal pages and I got that search engines don't crawl the content generated7written by Facebook Comments. So do you confirm that from a SEO prospective this is not valuable at all? Would you suggest to implement this for example within every product page like Yelp has? Imagine all the value of UGC lost and not read by search engine crawler... In which case would you suggest to implement FB Comments and why? Thanks a lot! Cheers, Nino
On-Page Optimization | | printi0 -
Keyword use in meta description
Anyone know if its important that the target keyword is used AT THE START of the meta description, or is it enough that it is anywhere in the description...? I have a few big ones that are at the end of the description and I was wondering if I should move them up to the front... Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | inhouseninja0