Using Robots Meta Tag on Review Form Pages

[jake372]

I have gone over this so many times and I just can't seem to get it straight and hope someone can help me out with a couple of questions:

Right now, on my dynamically created pages created by filters (located on the category pages) I am using rel""canonical" to point them to their respective category page.

1. Should I also use the robots meta tag as well?

Similarly, each product I have on my site has a review form on it and thus is getting indexed by Google.  I have placed the same canonical tag on them as well pointing them to the page with the review form on it.

2. In the past I used robots.txt to block google from the review pages but this didn't really do much.  Should I be using the robots meta tag on these pages as well?

If I used the robots meta tag should I noindex,nofollow?

Thanks in advance,

Jake

[jake372]

Hi Ollan,

Thanks,  I guess I had a round about way of asking my question and you confirmed what I thought.  I am using the canonical tag on these pages:

http://www.1800doorbell.com/wireless-plug-in-door-chimes.htm?option=1
http://www.1800doorbell.com/wireless-plug-in-door-chimes.htm?option=21
http://www.1800doorbell.com/wireless-plug-in-door-chimes.htm?option=31
http://www.1800doorbell.com/wireless-plug-in-door-chimes.htm?option=41

Thanks again,

Jake

[ollan]

Hi Jake,

After looking at your page, I have the feeling that what you want to do is eliminate any possibility of duplicate content, am I correct? It seems like every product on your site has it's own unique URL anyway. You would want each of these pages crawled and indexed, so I wouldn't use noindex,nofollow on these pages. Only use noindex,nofollow on pages that you DON'T want to see in the search engine results.

Use the rel="canonical" on the pages that could be reached through multiple URLs.

On your page: http://www.1800doorbell.com/wireless-plug-in-door-chimes.htm?option=71,
I would use the rel="canonical", because these URLs

http://www.1800doorbell.com/wireless-plug-in-door-chimes.htm?option=1
http://www.1800doorbell.com/wireless-plug-in-door-chimes.htm?option=21
http://www.1800doorbell.com/wireless-plug-in-door-chimes.htm?option=31
http://www.1800doorbell.com/wireless-plug-in-door-chimes.htm?option=41

...etc., all take you to the exact same page.

Hope this helps!

[jake372]

Thanks Ollan.  So I would want these filter pages (like this: http://www.1800doorbell.com/wireless-plug-in-door-chimes.htm?option=71) both noindex and nofollow right?

[ollan]

Even if you use a directive in robots.txt, your pages can still get crawled and indexed if the crawler gets there via an external link to your page. Simple solution is to use:

on all pages you want excluded from the SERPs.