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.
Meta tag "noindex,nofollow" by accident
-
Hi,
3 weeks ago I wanted to release a new website (made in WordPress), so I neatly created 301 redirects for all files and folders of my old html website and transferred the WordPress site into the index folder. Job well done I thought, but after a few days, my site suddenly disappeared from google.
I read in other Q&A's that this could happen so I waited a little longer till I finally saw today that there was a meta robots added on every page with "noindex, nofollow". For some reason, the WordPress setting "I want to forbid search engines, but allow normal visitors to my website" was selected, although I never even opened that section called "Privacy".
So my question is, will this have a negative impact on my pagerank afterwards?
Thanks,
Sven
-
I uploaded the sitemap, let's hope in a few days everything will be normal again and that I'll will regain my PR1 keyword.
Thanks John, and Ryan for your correction!
-
Reconsideration requests are for when Google removes a site from it's index for spam or other reasons. There would not be any reason to use one in this instance.
First and foremost, fix the setting. Then verify the noindex tag is removed by visiting a few of your site's pages. Right-click, choose View Page Source and ensure the tag is gone.
Next, as John suggested create a fresh site map and submit it to Google. Log into Google WMT to ensure they have received the updated map. Since this is a new site and you seem anxious to fix this issue, take a moment and check your robots.txt file from Google WMT to ensure there are not any issues.
If your site is large, it may take time for all your pages to re-appear. If your site is small, you will see results faster.
If there is any 1 or 2 articles you feel are critically important to be indexed fast, then I would suggest tweeting a link for the page to help increase it's visibility to Google. I have no knowledge of this working but I even heard of a person tweeting a link to their site map to get indexed faster. I have no idea if it worked but I love the creativity.
Good luck.
-
Do you have a Google account with Webmaster Tools? If not, go ahead and sign up for one (it's free!) then submit your site for reconsideration to Google. While you're at it, make sure your XML site map is working. You should be back on Google within a few days to a week.
It sounds like this is a short-term nofollow situation, so that shouldn't be too much of an issue.
-John
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
-
Robots.txt & meta noindex--site still shows up on Google Search
I have set up my robots.txt like this: User-agent: *
Technical SEO | | RoxBrock
Disallow: / and I have this meta tag in my on a Wordpress site, set up with SEO Yoast name="robots" content="noindex,follow"/> I did "Fetch as Google" on my Google Search Console My website is still showing up in the search results and it says this: "A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt" This site has not shown up for years and now it is ranking above my site that I want to rank for this keyword. How do I get Google to ignore this site? This seems really weird and I'm confused how a site with little content, that has not been updated for years can rank higher than a site that is constantly updated and improved.1 -
How do I "undo" or remove a Google Search Console change of address?
I have a client that set a change of address in Google Search Console where they informed Google that their preferred domain was a subdomain, and now they want Google to also consider their base domain (without the change of address). How do I get the change of address in Google search console removed?
Technical SEO | | KatherineWatierOng0 -
How can I Style Long "List Posts" in Wordpress?
Hi All, I have been working on a list-post which spans over 100 items. Each item on the list has a quick blurb to explain it, an image and a few resource links. I am trying to find an attractive way to present this long list post in Wordpress. I have seen several sites with long list posts however; they place their items one on top of the other which yields a VERY long page and the end user has to do a lot of scrolling. Others turn their lists into slideshows, but I have no data on how slides perform against 10-mile-long-lists which load in 1 page. I would like to do something similar to what List25.com does as they present about 5-10 items per page and they seem to have pagination. The pagination part I understand however; is there a shortcode plugin to format lists in an attractive way just like list25?
Technical SEO | | IvanC0 -
Doubleclick and NoFollow
Hi, I'm trying to work out whether a group of links to my site are Follow or NoFollow. There is no rel=noFollow on the link but they do appear to go through Doubleclick (the link begins with this http://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/), will this automatically cut-off any link juice? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | whis0 -
How valuable is content "hidden" behind a JavaScript dropdown really?
I've come across a method implemented by some SEO agencies to fill up pages with somehow relevant text and hide it behind a javascript dropdown. Does Google fall for such cheap tricks? You can see this method used on these pages for example (just scroll down to the bottom) - it's all in German, but you get the idea I guess: http://www.insider-boersenbrief.de/ http://www.deko-und-kerzenshop.de/ How is you experience with this way of adding content to a site? Do you think it is valuable or will it get penalised?
Technical SEO | | jfkorn0 -
Why "title missing or empty" when title tag exists?
Greetings! On Dec 1, 2011 in a SEOMoz campaign, two crawl metrics shot up from zero (Nov 17, Nov 24). "Title missing or empty" was 9,676. "Duplicate page content" was 9,678. Whoa! Content at site has not changed. I checked a sample of web pages and each seems to have a proper TITLE tag. Page content differs as well -- albeit we list electronic part numbers of hard-to-find parts, which look similar. I found a similar post http://www.seomoz.org/q/why-crawl-error-title-missing-or-empty-when-there-is-already-title-and-meta-desciption-in-place . In answer, Sha ran Screaming Frog crawler. I ran Frog crawler on a few hundred pages. Titles were found and hash codes were unique. Hmmm. Site with errors is http://electronics1.usbid.com Small sample of pages with errors: electronics1.usbid.com/catalog_10.html
Technical SEO | | groovykarma
electronics1.usbid.com/catalog_100.html
electronics1.usbid.com/catalog_1000.html I've tried to reproduce errors yet I cannot. What am I missing please? Thanks kindly, Loren0 -
301 for "index.php" in Web.config?
Hi there, I'm trying to create a 301 redirect for the file "index.php" but I keep getting a "fail to redirect" message in Firefox whenever I insert it into the Web.config file. <location path="index.php"></location> Is there anyway around this? Thanks for any help According to Open Site Explorer, there are about 500 links to my index file but it only has a 302 status so will not be passing link juice.
Technical SEO | | tdsnet0 -
Why crawl error "title missing or empty" when there is already "title and meta desciption" in place?
I've been getting 73 "title missing or empty" warnings from SEOMOZ crawl diagnostic. This is weird as I've installed yoast wordpress seo plugin and all posts do have title and meta description. But why the results here.. can anyone explain what's happening? Thanks!! Here are some of the links that are listed with "title missing, empty". Almost all our blog posts were listed there. http://www.gan4hire.com/blog/2011/are-you-here-for-good/ http://www.gan4hire.com/blog/2011/are-you-socially-awkward/
Technical SEO | | JasonDGreat
MaeM3.png TLcD8.png
0