"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
-
Canonical vs 301 for index.php
Hello, we found recently quite a big error our index.php file had no canonical tag nor was a 301 redirect. So we put a canonical tag to it that it's the main www.examle.com duplicate . Now is there any difference in regards to link juice or Google 301 vs canonical tag ? I read that moz did a 301 from their index php. I understand one difference is that user then can Type in the URL if no 301, but I'm interested about ranking effect of it.
Technical SEO | | advertisingcloud0 -
Single page website vs Google
Hi, I was wondering on this issue: There is a website for guesthouse. It has all information on one page (it is a valid page, with legitimate content). How google treats those pages? Would it treat it as Doorway Page? Or give some other penalties? What about a bounce rate? Because it will be pretty high, as there is no option to go somewhere else? What is your opinion on single page websites - SEO wise? Is it a shot in the foot? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | LeszekNowakowski0 -
Using "Div's" to place content at top of HTML
Is it still a good practice to use "div's" to place content at the top of the HTML code, if your content is at the bottom of the web page?
Technical SEO | | tdawson090 -
My beta site (beta.website.com) has been inadvertently indexed. Its cached pages are taking traffic away from our real website (website.com). Should I just "NO INDEX" the entire beta site and if so, what's the best way to do this? Please advise.
My beta site (beta.website.com) has been inadvertently indexed. Its cached pages are taking traffic away from our real website (website.com). Should I just "NO INDEX" the entire beta site and if so, what's the best way to do this? Are there any other precautions I should be taking? Please advise.
Technical SEO | | BVREID0 -
Noindex nofollow issue
Hi, For some reason 2 pages on my website, time to time get noindex nofollow tags they disappear from search engine, i have to log in my thesis wp theme and uncheck box for "noindex" "nofollow" and them update, in couple days my website is back up. here is screen shot http://screencast.com/t/A6V6tIr2Cb6 Is that something in thesis theme that cause the problem? even though i unchecked the box and updated but its still stays checked http://screencast.com/t/TnjDcYfsH4sq appreciated for your help!
Technical SEO | | tonyklu0 -
"Not Selected" in index status rising continously
Hello, After the penguin update my site slowly suffered loss in traffic. and now from daily 15K-18K its droped to 8K. (6K in weekends) I have been trying to find out what the reasons are but i havent got any good luck yet been few months now. I noticed this change in the GWT tho : Not selected in index status significantly risen up. please see attached image. My site is Designzzz i am continously fixing errors and problems shown in the seomoz pro tools. If you guys can take few mins to evaluate what could be the reason for such drop i will be thankful :} cheers 6Xtkp.jpg
Technical SEO | | wickedsunny10 -
Duplicate Content Vs No Content
Hello! A question that has been throw around a lot at our company has been "Is duplicate content better than no content?". We operate a range of online flash game sites, most of which pull their games from a feed, which includes the game description. We have unique content written on the home page of the website, but aside from that, the game descriptions are the only text content on the website. We have been hit by both Panda and Penguin, and are in the process of trying to recover from both. In this effort we are trying to decide whether to remove or keep the game descriptions. I figured the best way to settle the issue would be to ask here. I understand the best solution would be to replace the descriptions with unique content, however, that is a massive task when you've got thousands of games. So if you have to choose between duplicate or no content, which is better for SEO? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Ryan_Phillips0 -
Rel="canonical" and rewrite
Hi, I'm going to describe a scenario on one of my sites, I was wondering if someone could tell me what is the correct use of rel="canonical" here. Suppose I have a rewrite rule that has a rule like this: RewriteRule ^Online-Games /main/index.php So, in the index file, do I set the rel="canonical" to Online-Games or /main/index.php? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | webtarget0