Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
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
-
Page Indexing without content
Hello. I have a problem of page indexing without content. I have website in 3 different languages and 2 of the pages are indexing just fine, but one language page (the most important one) is indexing without content. When searching using site: page comes up, but when searching unique keywords for which I should rank 100% nothing comes up. This page was indexing just fine and the problem arose couple of days ago after google update finished. Looking further, the problem is language related and every page in the given language that is newly indexed has this problem, while pages that were last crawled around one week ago are just fine. Has anyone ran into this type of problem?
Technical SEO | | AtuliSulava1 -
Keywords are indexed on the home page
Hello everyone, For one of our websites, we have optimized for many keywords. However, it seems that every keyword is indexed on the home page, and thus not ranked properly. This occurs only on one of our many websites. I am wondering if anyone knows the cause of this issue, and how to solve it. Thank you.
Technical SEO | | Ginovdw1 -
Removing a site from Google index with no index met tags
Hi there! I wanted to remove a duplicated site from the google index. I've read that you can do this by removing the URL from Google Search console and, although I can't find it in Google Search console, Google keeps on showing the site on SERPs. So I wanted to add a "no index" meta tag to the code of the site however I've only found out how to do this for individual pages, can you do the same for a entire site? How can I do it? Thank you for your help in advance! L
Technical SEO | | Chris_Wright1 -
Indexing Issue of Dynamic Pages
Hi All, I have a query for which i am struggling to find out the answer. I unable to retrieve URL using "site:" query on Google SERP. However, when i enter the direct URL or with "info:" query then a snippet appears. I am not able to understand why google is not showing URL with "site:" query. Whether the page is indexed or not? Or it's soon going to be deindexed. Secondly, I would like to mention that this is a dynamic URL. The index file which we are using to generate this URL is not available to Google Bot. For instance, There are two different URL's. http://www.abc.com/browse/ --- It's a parent page.
Technical SEO | | SameerBhatia
http://www.abc.com/browse/?q=123 --- This is the URL, generated at run time using browse index file. Google unable to crawl index file of browse page as it is unable to run independently until some value will get passed in the parameter and is not indexed by Google. Earlier the dynamic URL's were indexed and was showing up in Google for "site:" query but now it is not showing up. Can anyone help me what is happening here? Please advise. Thanks0 -
Homepage not indexed - seems to defy explanation
Hey folks Hoping to get some more eyes on a specific problem I am seeing with a clients site. Site: http:www.ukjuicers.com We have checked everything we can think of and the usual suspects here are not present: Canonical URL is in place Site is shown as indexed in search console No Crawl, DNS, Connectivity or server errors No robots.txt blocking - verified in search console No robots meta tags or directives Fetch as Google works Fetch & render works site command returns all other pages info command does not return the homepage homepage is cached and cache has been updated since this issue started: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.ukjuicers.com homepage is indexed in yahoo and Bing all variations redirect to the www.ukjuicers.com domain (.co.uk, .com, www, sans www etc) The only issue I found after some extensive digging was some issues with the HTTP and HTTPS versions of the site both being available and both specifying the canonical version as themselves. So, http site used canonicals with http and https site used canonicals with https. So, a conflict there with the canonical exacerbating the problem it is there to solve. The HTTPS site is not indexed though and we have set this up in webmaster tools and now the web developer has set redirects to ensure all versions even the https now 301 redirect to the http://www.ukjuicers.com page so these canonical issues have been ironed out. But... it's still not indexing the homepage. The practical implications of this are quite scary - the site used to be somewhere between 1st and 4th for keywords like 'juicers', 'juicer' etc. Now they are bottom of page 1 or top of page 2 with an internal page. They were jostling with the big boys (amazon, argos, john lewis etc) but now they are right at the bottom of the second page. It's a strange one - i have seen all manor of technical problems over the years but this one seems to defy sensible explanation. The next step is to do a full technical SEO audit of the site but I am always of the opinion that with many eyes all bugs are shallow so if anyone has any input or experience with odd indexation problems like this would love to get your input. Cheers
Technical SEO | | Marcus_Miller
Marcus0 -
Include or exclude noindex urls in sitemap?
We just added tags to our pages with thin content. Should we include or exclude those urls from our sitemap.xml file? I've read conflicting recommendations.
Technical SEO | | vcj0 -
How To Cleanup the Google Index After a Website Has Been HACKED
We have a client whose website was hacked, and some troll created thousands of viagra pages, which were all indexed by Google. See the screenshot for an example. The site has been cleaned up completely, but I wanted to know if anyone can weigh in on how we can cleanup the Google index. Are there extra steps we should take? So far we have gone into webmaster tools and submitted a new site map. ^802D799E5372F02797BE19290D8987F3E248DCA6656F8D9BF6^pimgpsh_fullsize_distr.png
Technical SEO | | yoursearchteam0 -
How to get Google to index another page
Hi, I will try to make my question clear, although it is a bit complex. For my site the most important keyword is "Insurance" or at least the danish variation of this. My problem is that Google are'nt indexing my frontpage on this, but are indexing a subpage - www.mydomain.dk/insurance instead of www.mydomain.dk. My link bulding will be to subpages and to my main domain, but i wont be able to get that many links to www.mydomain.dk/insurance. So im interested in making my frontpage the page that is my main page for the keyword insurance, but without just blowing the traffic im getting from the subpage at the moment. Is there any solutions to do this? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | Petersen110