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.
Noindex vs. page removal - Panda recovery
-
I'm wondering whether there is a consensus within the SEO community as to whether noindexing pages vs. actually removing pages is different from Google Pandas perspective?Does noindexing pages have less value when removing poor quality content than physically removing ie. either 301ing or 404ing the page being removed and removing the links to it from the site?
I presume that removing pages has a positive impact on the amount of link juice that gets to some of the remaining pages deeper into the site, but I also presume this doesn't have any direct impact on the Panda algorithm?
Thanks very much in advance for your thoughts, and corrections on my assumptions
-
I think it can get pretty complicated, but a couple of observations:
(1) In my experience, NOINDEX does work - indexation is what Google cares about primarily. Eventually, you do need to trim the crawl paths, XML sitemaps, etc., but often it's best to wait until the content is de-indexed.
(2) From an SEO perspective (temporarily ignoring Panda), a 301 consolidates link juice - so, if a page has incoming links or traffic, that's generally the best way to go. If the page really has no value at all for search, either a 404 or NOINDEX should be ok (strictly from an SEO perspective). If the page is part of a path, then NOINDEX,FOLLOW could preserve the flow of link juice, whereas a 404 might cut it off (not to that page, but to the rest of the site and deeper pages).
(3) From a user perspective, 301, 404, and NOINDEX are very different. A 301 is a good alternative to pass someone to a more relevant or more current page (and replace an expired one), for example. If the page really has no value at all, then I think a 404 is better than NOINDEX, just in principle. A NOINDEX leaves the page lingering around, and sometimes it's better to trim your content completely.
So, the trick is balancing (2) and (3), and that's often not a one-sized fits all solution. In other words, some groups of pages may have different needs than others.
-
Agreed - my experience is that NOINDEX definitely can have a positive impact on index dilution and even Panda-level problems. Google is mostly interested in index removal.
Of course, you still need to fix internal link structures that might be causing bad URLs to roll out. Even a 404 doesn't remove a crawl path, and tons of them can cause crawler fatigue.
-
I disagree with everyone
The reason panda hit you is because you were ranking for low quality pages you were telling Google wanted them to index and rank.
When you
a) remove them from sitemap.xmls
b) block them in robots.txt
c) noindex,follow or noindex, nofollow them in metas
you are removing them from Googles index and from the equation of good quality vs low quality pages indexed on your site.
That is good enough. You can still have them return a 200 and be live on your site AND be included in your user navigation.
One example is user generated pages when users signup and get their own URL www.mysite.com/tom-jones for example.Those pages can be live but should not be indexed because they have no content usually other than a name.
As long as you are telling Google - don't index them I don't want them to be considered in the equation of pages to show up in the index, you are fine with keeping these pages live!
-
Thanks guys
-
I would agree noindex is not as good as removing the content but it still can work as long as there are no links or sitemaps that lead Google back to the low quality content.
I worked on a site that was badly affected by Panda in 2011. I had some success by noindexing genuine duplicates (pages that looked really alike but did need to be there) and removing low quality pages that were old and archived. I was left with about 60 genuine pages that needed to be indexed and rank well so I had to pay a copywriter to rewrite all those pages (originally we had the same affiliate copy on there as lots of other sites). That took about 3 months for Google to lift or at least reduce the penalty and our rankings to return to the top 10.
Tom is right that just noindexing is not enough. If pages are low quality or duplicates then keep them out of sitemaps and navigation so you don't link to them either. You'll also nned redirects in case anyone else links to them. In my experience, eventually Google will drop them from the index but it doesn't happen overnight.
Good luck!
-
Thanks Tom
Understand your points. The idea behind noindexing is that you're telling Google not to take any notice of the page.
I guess the question is whether that works:
- Not at all
- A little bit
- A lot
- Is as good as removing the content
I believe it's definitely not as good as actually removing the content, but not sure about the other three possibilities.
We did notice that we got a small improvement in placement when we noindexed a large amount of the site and took several hundred other pages actually down. Hard to say which of those two things caused the improvement.
We've heard of it working for others, which is why I'm asking...
Appreciate your quick response
Phil
-
I don't see how noindexing pages would help with regards to a Panda recovery if you're already penalised.
Once the penalty is in place, my understanding is that it will remain so until all offending pages have been removed or changed to unique content. Therefore, noindexing would not work - particularly if that page is accessible via an HTML/XML sitemap or a site navigation system. Even then, I would presume that Google will have the URL logged and if it remained as is, any penalty removable would not be forthcoming.
Noindexing pages that has duplicate content but hasn't been penalised yet would probably prevent (or rather postpone) any penalty - although I'd still rather avoid the issue outright where possible. Once a penalty is in place, however, I'm pretty sure it will remain until removed, even if noindexed.
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
-
Duplicate content, although page has "noindex"
Hello, I had an issue with some pages being listed as duplicate content in my weekly Moz report. I've since discussed it with my web dev team and we decided to stop the pages from being crawled. The web dev team added this coding to the pages <meta name='robots' content='max-image-preview:large, noindex dofollow' />, but the Moz report is still reporting the pages as duplicate content. Note from the developer "So as far as I can see we've added robots to prevent the issue but maybe there is some subtle change that's needed here. You could check in Google Search Console to see how its seeing this content or you could ask Moz why they are still reporting this and see if we've missed something?" Any help much appreciated!
Technical SEO | | rj_dale0 -
Getting high priority issue for our xxx.com and xxx.com/home as duplicate pages and duplicate page titles can't seem to find anything that needs to be corrected, what might I be missing?
I am getting high priority issue for our xxx.com and xxx.com/home as reporting both duplicate pages and duplicate page titles on crawl results, I can't seem to find anything that needs to be corrected, what am I be missing? Has anyone else had a similar issue, how was it corrected?
Technical SEO | | tgwebmaster0 -
Remove page with PA of 69 and 300 root domain links?
Hi We have a few pages within our website which were at one time a focus for us, but due to developing the other areas of the website, they are now defunct (better content elsewhere) and in some ways slightly duplicate so we're merging two areas into one. We have removed the links to the main hub page from our navigation, and were going to 301 this main page to the main hub page of the section which replaces it. However I've just noticed the page due to be removed has a PA of 69 and 15,000 incoming links from 300 root domains. So not bad! It's actually stronger than the page we are 301'ing it to (but not really an option to swap as the URL structure will look messy) With this in mind, is the strategy to redirect still the best or should we keep the page and turn it into a landing page, with links off to the other section? It just feels as though we would be doing this just for the sake of google, im not sure how much decent content we could put on it as we've already done that on the destination page. The incoming links to that page will still be relevant to the new section (they are both v similar hence the merging) Any suggestions welcome, thanks
Technical SEO | | benseb0 -
What is the best way to find missing alt tags on my site (site wide - not page by page)?
I am looking to find all the missing alt tags on my site at once. I have a FF extension that use to do it page by page, but my site is huge and that will take forever. Thanks!!
Technical SEO | | franchisesolutions1 -
Splitting Page Authority with two URLs for the same page.
Hello guys, My website is currently holding two different URLs for the same page and I am under the impression such set up is dividing my Page Authority and Link Juice. We currently have the following page with both URLs below: www.wbresearch.com/soldiertechnologyusa/home.aspx
Technical SEO | | JoaoPdaCosta-WBR
www.wbresearch.com/soldiertechnologyusa/ Analysing the page authority and backlinks I identified that we are splitting the amount of backlinks (links from sites, social media and therefore authority). "/home.aspx"
PA: 67
Linking Root Domains: 52
Total Links: 272 "/"
PA: 64
Linking Root Domains: 29
Total Links: 128 I am under the impression that if the URLs were the same we would maximise our backlinks and therefore page authority. My Question: How can I fix this? Should I have a 301 redirect from the page "/" to the "/home.aspx" therefore passing the authority and link juice of “/” directly to “/homes.aspx”? Trying to gather thoughts and ideas on this, suggestions are much appreciated? Thanks!0 -
Determining When to Break a Page Into Multiple Pages?
Suppose you have a page on your site that is a couple thousand words long. How would you determine when to split the page into two and are there any SEO advantages to doing this like being more focused on a specific topic. I noticed the Beginner's Guide to SEO is split into several pages, although it would concentrate the link juice if it was all on one page. Suppose you have a lot of comments. Is it better to move comments to a second page at a certain point? Sometimes the comments are not super focused on the topic of the page compared to the main text.
Technical SEO | | ProjectLabs1 -
How to remove the 4XX Client error,Too many links in a single page Warning and Cannonical Notices.
Firstly,I am getting around 12 Errors in the category 4xx Client error. The description says that this is either bad or a broken link.How can I repair this ? Secondly, I am getting lots of warnings related to too many page links of a single page.I want to know how to tackle this ? Finally, I don't understand the basics of Cannonical notices.I have around 12 notices of this kind which I want to remove too. Please help me out in this regard. Thank you beforehand. Amit Ganguly http://aamthoughts.blogspot.com - Sustainable Sphere
Technical SEO | | amit.ganguly0 -
Which pages to "noindex"
I have read through the many articles regarding the use of Meta Noindex, but what I haven't been able to find is a clear explanation of when, why or what to use this on. I'm thinking that it would be appropriate to use it on: legal pages such as privacy policy and terms of use
Technical SEO | | mmaes
search results page
blog archive and category pages Thanks for any insight of this.0