Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • SEO Q&A
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • Case Studies
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      What is your Brand Authority?
      Moz

      What is your Brand Authority?

      Check yours now
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • SEO Q&A

        Insights & discussions from an SEO community of 500,000+.

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • Case Studies

        Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. NOINDEX listing pages: Page 2, Page 3... etc?

    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.

    NOINDEX listing pages: Page 2, Page 3... etc?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    3
    3
    1533
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • Peter264
      Peter264 last edited by

      Would it be beneficial to NOINDEX category listing pages except for the first page.  For example on this site:

      http://flyawaysimulation.com/downloads/101/fsx-missions/

      Has lots of pages such as Page 2, Page 3, Page 4... etc:

      http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aflyawaysimulation.com+fsx+missions

      Would there be any SEO benefit of NOINDEX on these pages?  Of course, FOLLOW is default, so links would still be followed and juice applied.

      Your thoughts and suggestions are much appreciated.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • dunklea
        dunklea last edited by

        We've taken the approach of adding rel="canonical" to all paginated content with the link pointing to the first page of results. We keep everything indexed and followed. We also help Google identify the URL parameter created for paginated content in our Webmaster Tool settings.

        This has worked well for us, but another approach would be to add rel="next" and rel="prev" to the paginated links. This is openly supported by Google to handle pagination, but might be a little tricky to setup in your CMS.

        Good luck!

        Andrew

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • gmk1567
          gmk1567 last edited by

          Noindex will take out the pages from the index of search engines. This will impact your traffic if your pages are already ranked.

          As long as the category pages have different content, you will be fine. No need to remove them from the index unless you have specific requirement to do so.

          For some reason, if you want only the first page to be ranked then go with the pagination hints which will consolidate your link value to the first page and most likely the first page will come up in the search result.

          Note: Bing didn't officially endorse this practice and may be on its way.

          http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/pagination-with-relnext-and-relprev.html

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
          • 1 / 1
          • First post
            Last post

          Got a burning SEO question?

          Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


          Start my free trial


          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.

          • See all categories

          Related Questions

          • amarieyoussef

            Should I index resource submission forms, thank you pages, etc.?

            Should I index resource submission forms, thank you, event pages, etc.? Doesn't Google consider this content too thin?

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | amarieyoussef
            0
          • JimJ

            Does having alot of pages with noindex and nofollow tags affect rankings?

            We are an e-commerce marketplace at for alternative fashion and home decor. We have over 1000+ stores on the marketplace.  Early this year, we switched the website from HTTP to HTTPS in March 2018 and also added noindex and nofollow tags to the store about page and store policies (mostly boilerplate content) Our traffic dropped by 45% and we have since not recovered. We have done I am wondering could these tags be affecting our rankings?

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JimJ
            1
          • ostesmorbrod

            Landing pages for paid traffic and the use of noindex vs canonical

            A client of mine has a lot of differentiated landing pages with only a few changes on each, but with the same intent and goal as the generic version. The generic version of the landing page  is included in navigation, sitemap and is indexed on Google. The purpose of the differentiated landing pages is to include the city and some minor changes in the text/imagery to best fit the Adwords text. Other than that, the intent and purpose of the pages are the same as the main / generic page. They are not to be indexed, nor am I trying to have hidden pages linking to the generic and indexed one (I'm not going the blackhat way). So – I want to avoid that the duplicate landing pages are being indexed (obviously), but I'm not sure if I should use noindex (nofollow as well?) or rel=canonical, since these landing pages are localized campaign versions of the generic page with more or less only paid traffic to them. I don't want to be accidentally penalized, but I still need the generic / main page to rank as high as possible... What would be your recommendation on this issue?

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ostesmorbrod
            0
          • Tylerj

            Should I use noindex or robots to remove pages from the Google index?

            I have a Magento site and just realized we have about 800 review pages indexed. The /review directory is disallowed in robots.txt but the pages are still indexed. From my understanding robots means it will not crawl the pages BUT if the pages are still indexed if they are linked from somewhere else. I can add the noindex tag to the review pages but they wont be crawled. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-do-not-use-noindex-in-robots-txt-20873.html Should I remove the robots.txt and add the noindex? Or just add the noindex to what I already have?

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tylerj
            0
          • khi5

            "noindex, follow" or "robots.txt" for thin content pages

            Does anyone have any testing evidence what is better to use for pages with thin content, yet important pages to keep on a website? I am referring to content shared across multiple websites (such as e-commerce, real estate etc). Imagine a website with 300 high quality pages indexed and 5,000 thin product type pages, which are pages that would not generate relevant search traffic. Question goes: Does the interlinking value achieved by "noindex, follow" outweigh the negative of Google having to crawl all those "noindex" pages? With robots.txt one has Google's crawling focus on just the important pages that are indexed and that may give ranking a boost. Any experiments with insight to this would be great. I do get the story about "make the pages unique", "get customer reviews and comments" etc....but the above question is the important question here.

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi5
            0
          • rayvensoft

            How to combine 2 pages (same domain) that rank for same keyword?

            Hi Mozzers, A quick question.  In the last few months I have noticed that for a number of keywords I am having 2 different pages on my domain show up in the SERP.  Always right next to each other (for example, position #7 and #8 or #3 and #4).  So in the SERP it looks something like: www.mycompetition1.com www.mycompetition2.com www.mywebsite.com/page1.html
            4) www.mywebsite.com**/page2.html**
            5) www.mycompetition3.com Now, I actually need both pages since the content on both pages is different - but on the same topic.  Both pages have links to them, but page1.html always tends to have more.  So, what is the best practice to tell Google that I only want 1 page to rank?  Of course, the idea is that by combining the SEO Juice of both pages, I can push my way up to position 2 or 1. Does anybody have any experience in this?  Any advice is much appreciated.

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rayvensoft
            0
          • WebServiceConsulting.com

            NoIndexing Massive Pages all at once: Good or bad?

            If you have a site with a few thousand high quality and authoritative pages, and tens of thousands with search results and tags pages with thin content, and noindex,follow the thin content pages all at once, will google see this is a good or bad thing? I am only trying to do what Google guidelines suggest, but since I have so many pages index on my site, will throwing the noindex tag on ~80% of thin content pages negatively impact my site?

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com
            0
          • Visually

            Are there any negative effects to using a 301 redirect from a page to another internal page?

            For example, from http://www.dog.com/toys to http://www.dog.com/chew-toys. In my situation, the main purpose of the 301 redirect is to replace the page with a new internal page that has a better optimized URL. This will be executed across multiple pages (about 20). None of these pages hold any search rankings but do carry a decent amount of page authority.

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Visually
            0

          Get started with Moz Pro!

          Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

          Start my free trial
          Products
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Local
          • Moz API
          • Moz Data
          • STAT
          • Product Updates
          Moz Solutions
          • SMB Solutions
          • Agency Solutions
          • Enterprise Solutions
          Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Authority Checker
          • Link Explorer
          • Keyword Explorer
          • Competitive Research
          • Brand Authority Checker
          • MozBar Extension
          • MozCast
          Resources
          • Blog
          • SEO Learning Center
          • Help Hub
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
          • How-to Guides
          • Moz Academy
          • API Docs
          About Moz
          • About
          • Team
          • Careers
          • Contact
          Why Moz
          • Case Studies
          • Testimonials
          Get Involved
          • Become an Affiliate
          • MozCon
          • Webinars
          • Practical Marketer Series
          • MozPod
          Connect with us

          Contact the Help team

          Join our newsletter
          Moz logo
          © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
          • Accessibility
          • Terms of Use
          • Privacy

          Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.