"nofollow" vs. "no follow"
-
Does anyone know if it is problematic to have a space between the "no" and the "follow"? I just discovered our CMS has been inserting a space and am trying to understand if it the reason why something that we were trying to keep from being indexed has become indexed.
-
Happy to help
-
Super helpful. Thank you!
-
Hiya, there's an SEO Round Table article from 2009 where Matt Cutts and John Mueller said that Google is looking for an exact match to "nofollow" but that they would consider broadening it to also include the space if they felt the intent is clear enough. I haven't seen anything since and, while it's reasonable to assume Google have broadened the match, I wouldn't count on it.
That said, more importantly, in March this year Google announced a change to how the search engine treats nofollow links. Rather than being treated as a command (as they previously were) they'll now be treated as a strong hint. We know that Googlebot can ignore other hints (like canonicals) so it's quite possible that it is doing the same here. In this case, where you don't want something indexed, I'd rely on noindexing the page itself rather than nofollowing links. Noindexing the page should also help the situation you're in now where the cat is out of the bag, so to speak, and you need to get the page removed.
Hope that helps!
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 advice on ecommerce url structure where categories contain "/c/"
Hi! We use Hybris as plattform and I would like input on which url to choose. We must keep "/c/" before the actual category. c stands for category. I.e. this current url format will be shortened and cleaned:
Technical SEO | | hampgunn
https://www.granngarden.se/Sortiment/Husdjur/Hund/Hundfoder-%26-Hundmat/c/hundfoder To either: a.
https://www.granngarden.se/husdjur/hund/hundfoder/c/hundfoder b.
https://www.granngarden.se/husdjur/hund/c/hundfoder (hundfoder means dogfood) The question is whether we should keep the duplicated category name (hundfoder) before the "/c/" or not. Will there be SEO disadvantages by removing the duplicate "hundfoder" before the "/c/"? I prefer the shorter version ofc, but do not want to jeopardize any SEO rankings or send confusing signals to search engines or customers due to the "/c/" breaking up the url breadcrumb. What do you guys say and prefer from the above alternatives? Thanks /Hampus0 -
SEMRush's Site Audit Tool "SEO Ideas"
Recently SEMRush added a feature to its site audit tool called "SEO Ideas." In the case of specific the site I'm looking at it with, it's ideas consist mostly of suggesting words to add to the page for the page/my phrase(s) to perform better. It suggests this even when the term(s) or phrases(s) it's looking at are #1. Has anybody used this tool for this or something similar and found it to be valuable and if so how valuable? The reason I ask is that it would be a fair amount of work to go through these pages and find ways to add the select words and phrases and, frankly, it feels kind of 2005 to me. Your thoughts? Thanks... Darcy
Technical SEO | | 945010 -
Missing Meta Tags - "thousands" using WooCommerce?
Recently took a site live for a client using WP/WooCommerce to replace their antiquated shopping cart site and have encountered thousands of "Missing Meta Description Tag" errors. Have researched and tried a couple different approaches, but nothing really seems to fix this problem. I'm happy to continue to research, but have never encountered this problem before. Anyone else encountered similar? If so, how did you fix? Which resources to start with? 2VKDRVx
Technical SEO | | twelvetwo.net0 -
Which forum platform has the best "SEO Functionality"?
I have used vBulletin with vBSEO for a number of years and have been happy with the SEO results that I have achieved. However, vBulletin's recent releases have become unstable, full of bugs and are not secure. I am intending on starting some new forums in the near future and would like to move away from vBulletin. I have heard good things about Xenforo and IP Boards. Does anybody have any experience with either platforms built in SEO functionality?
Technical SEO | | statman870 -
Rel="external"
Hi all, I got a link and its off a site and marked up with rel="external". Is this a followed or nofollowed link? Does it pass link juice? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Sharer0 -
Moz Crawl Reporting Duplicate content on "template" styled pages
We have a lot of detail pages on our site that reference specific scholarships. Each page has a different Title and Description. They also have unique information all regarding the same data points. The pages are displayed in a similar structure to the user so the data is easy to read. My problem is a lot of these pages are being reported as duplicate content when they certainly are not. Most of them are reported as duplicates when they have the same sponsor. They may have the same contact information listed. These two are being reported as duplicate of each other. They share some data but they are definitely different scholarships. http://www.collegexpress.com/scholarships/adelaide-mcclelland-garden-club-scholarship/9254/ http://www.collegexpress.com/scholarships/mary-wannamaker-witt-and-lee-hampton-witt-memorial-scholarship/10785/ Would it help to add a Canonical for each page to themselves? Any other suggestions would be great. Thanks
Technical SEO | | GeorgeLaRochelle0 -
.Nofollow and link count
If i use nofollow on links ( internal or external ), will it reduce the link count as regard to Google. If there are 50 external links, and i nofollow 20 of them, will Google count this as 30 external links.
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050 -
Confused about rel="canonical"
I'm receiving a duplicate content error in my reports for www.example.com and www.example.com/index.htm. Should I put the rel="canonical" on the index page and point it to www.example.com? And if I have other important pages where rel="canonical" is being suggested do I place the rel="canonical" on that page? For example if www.example/product is an important page would I place on that page?
Technical SEO | | BrandonC-2698870