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
-
Nofollow/Noindex Category Listing Pages with Filters
Our e-commerce site currently has thousands of duplicate pages indexed because category listing pages with all the different filters selected are indexed. So, for example, you would see indexed: example.com/boots example.com/boots/black example.com/boots/black-size-small etc. There is a logic in place that when more than one filter is selected all the links on the page are nofollowed, but Googlebot is still getting to them, and the variations are being indexed. At this point I'd like to add 'noindex' or canonical tags to the filtered versions of the category pages, but many of these filtered pages are driving traffic. Any suggestions? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | fayfr0 -
"5XX (Server Error)" - How can I fix this?
Hey Mozers! Moz Crawl tells me I am having an issue with my Wordpress category - it is returning a 5XX error and i'm not sure why? Can anyone help me determine the issue? Crawl Issues and Notices for: http://www.refusedcarfinance.com/news/category/news We found 1 crawler issue(s) for this page. High Priority Issues 1 5XX (Server Error) 5XX errors (e.g., a 503 Service Unavailable error) are shown when a valid request was made by the client, but the server failed to complete the request. This can indicate a problem with the server, and should be investigated and fixed.
Technical SEO | | RocketStats0 -
What punctuation can you use in meta tags? Are there any Google does not like?
So I know you can use dashes and | in meta tags, but can anyone tell me what other punctuation you can use? Also, it'd be great to know what punctuation you can't use. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Trevorneo1 -
Auto generated meta description tag in Drupal
Was having issues on Drupal not autogenerating a meta description tag, but I think I have figured it out. Just to verify, would this piece of code be the meta description tag (reason I ask is b/c it looks a little different than the usual tag I have seen):
Technical SEO | | kevgrand0 -
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 -
Img before or after h1 tag?
I like images to align right at top of content page. img tag before h1 tag looks better on page, but wondering if h1 tag before img tag is preferred by spider. Irrelevant? or possibly matters? thanks for any thoughts.
Technical SEO | | jotham2
All about Stuff or All about Stuff or even
All about Stuff0 -
Google Off/On Tags
I came across this article about telling google not to crawl a portion of a webpage, but I never hear anyone in the SEO community talk about them. http://perishablepress.com/press/2009/08/23/tell-google-to-not-index-certain-parts-of-your-page/ Does anyone use these and find them to be effective? If not, how do you suggest noindexing/canonicalizing a portion of a page to avoid duplicate content that shows up on multiple pages?
Technical SEO | | Hakkasan1 -
Is "last modified" time in XML Sitemaps important?
My Tech lead is concerned that his use of a script to generate XML sitemaps for some client sites may be causing negative issues for those sites. His concern centers around the fact that the script generates a sitemap which indicates that every URL page in the site was last modified at the exact same date and time. I have never heard anything to indicate that this might be a problem, but I do know that the sitemaps I generate for other client sites can choose server response or not. What is the best way to generate the sitemap? Last mod from actual time modified, or all set at one date and time?
Technical SEO | | ShaMenz0