NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW Mistake
-
One of our top organic landing page was set as "NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW" by "mistake". I took me about a week to realize this after I saw a drop of traffic on that page. I looked on Google to see if it was indexed and my fear were confirmed!
After finding our that it was switched to "NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW" I switched it back to "INDEX,FOLLOW" and did an index request in our Google Search Console.
Anyone else has run into a similar issue? Did you ever got the page inxed again?
-
Very happy to hear this!
-
For future reference.
My page was back indexed in Google 3 days after it was taken out and that I sent the re-index request.
This was a lot less bad than I thought it would be!
-
Yes, Google should automatically re-index and re-follow your page over the next few weeks in my experience. A way to speed the process up is to use the "Fetch and Render" tool in Google Search Console and then click "Request to Index".
Here is Googe's Guide for Using the "Fetch as Google" capability their Google Search Console: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6066468?hl=en
-
I'm really sorry for what happened! I recently had an employee who made such a mistake but at domain level We are monitoring our websites rankings and it fell from a visibility percentage of 21 to 4! Chaotic. After one month from correcting the problem, we only have a 10 visibility percentage. So, I think you might have to wait a bit until full recovery. However, please bear in mind that my team didn't notice the problem for one month since we did not have an optimization subscription for the client. Also, the domain did not have many linking pages to it and not a high authority. As such, I hope your page will recover much faster than the scenario I am talking about. Good luck!
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
-
Why is our noindex tag not working?
Hi, I have the following page where we've implemented a no index tag. But when we run this page in screaming frog or this tool here to verify the noidex is present and functioning, it shows that it's not. But if you view the source of the page, the code is present in the head tag. And unfortunately we've seen instances where Google is indexing pages we've noindexed. Any thoughts on the example above or why this is happening in Google? Eddy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eddys_kap0 -
Wordpress Tag Pages - NoIndex?
Hi there. I am using Yoast Wordpress Plugin. I just wonder if any test have been done around the effects of Index vs Noindex for Tag Pages? ( like when tagging a word relevant to an article ) Thanks 🙂 Martin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | s_EOgi_Bear0 -
Site Interlinking - footer and menu - whether to nofollow/remove
Hello, We've got a bunch of interlinking going on between the following sites: nlpca(dot)com thewealthymind(dot)com shop.nlpca(dot)com dynamicspinrelease(dot)com These are all owned and operated by the same people. Some linking is in the footer and some is in the menu or header. Could you take a look and tell me which interlinks you'd recommend nofollowing and which you'd recommend deleting entirely? We can always place a home page single link to replace those sitewides we delete or nofollow. I'm thinking we should delete everything in the footers and nofollow those in the menu or headers, placing a single dofollow link on the home page when deleting/nofollowing a sitewide link.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
Should I nofollow the links in the drop-down nav menu?
Currently we have a big drop down navigation menu with a hell of a lot of links for this site: shoesinternational.co.uk SEOmoz is complaining that pretty much all pages have too many links, around the 160 link mark. Should I think about nofollowing all or certain links on the navigation
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Creode0 -
Do Outbound NoFollow Links Reduce the Page's Ability to Pass PageRank?
I get the recent change where adding a nofollow to one link wont increase the juice passed to other links. I'm wondering if nofollow still passes link-juice into the void. i.e. if a page has $10 of link-juice and has one link then regardless of whether this link is follow or nofollow will the page will leak the same juice? Specifically, Is this site benefitting from having a nofollow on the links in it's car buyer's checklist: http://www.trademe.co.nz/motors/used-cars/mitsubishi/diamante/auction-480341592.htm
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seomoz8steer0 -
NOINDEX content still showing in SERPS after 2 months
I have a website that was likely hit by Panda or some other algorithm change. The hit finally occurred in September of 2011. In December my developer set the following meta tag on all pages that do not have unique content: name="robots" content="NOINDEX" /> It's been 2 months now and I feel I've been patient, but Google is still showing 10,000+ pages when I do a search for site:http://www.mydomain.com I am looking for a quicker solution. Adding this many pages to the robots.txt does not seem like a sound option. The pages have been removed from the sitemap (for about a month now). I am trying to determine the best of the following options or find better options. 301 all the pages I want out of the index to a single URL based on the page type (location and product). The 301 worries me a bit because I'd have about 10,000 or so pages all 301ing to one or two URLs. However, I'd get some link juice to that page, right? Issue a HTTP 404 code on all the pages I want out of the index. The 404 code seems like the safest bet, but I am wondering if that will have a negative impact on my site with Google seeing 10,000+ 404 errors all of the sudden. Issue a HTTP 410 code on all pages I want out of the index. I've never used the 410 code and while most of those pages are never coming back, eventually I will bring a small percentage back online as I add fresh new content. This one scares me the most, but am interested if anyone has ever used a 410 code. Please advise and thanks for reading.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NormanNewsome0 -
How to Define rel=nofollow Attribute for External Links?
I want to define rel=nofollow attribute for Vista Patio Umbrellas. I have designed narrow by search section on home page. I want to define rel=nofollow attribute for all text links which are available in left navigation. So, what is best solution for that?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit0