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.
Best way to noindex an image?
-
Hi all,
A client wanted a few pages noindexed, which was no problem using the meta robots noindex tag.
However they now want associated images removed, some of which still appear on pages that they still want indexed. I added the images to their robots.txt file a few weeks ago (probably over a month ago actually) but they're all still showing when you do an image search.
What's the best way to noindex them for good, and how do I go about implementing it?
Many thanks,
Steve
-
The noindex meta tag keeps the page out of the index but since images have their own url, it doesn't keep them out of the index, so you should use the noimageindex directive on the pages where the images in question reside.
-
Thanks Chris! So, in my instance, should I just add that directive to the 2 pages that feature the images but are still indexed? Or should I also include it to those pages that are noindexed, just to be on the safe side?
-
Steve, As long as no other resources are are linking to your images, you could use the noimageindex directive as such:
-
Thanks Ash. I've just found this Google resource about it - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/59819?hl=en - that says "URL removal requests expire after 90 days, after which the content may appear in our search results again." Is that true? Is there a more permanent way or would I/the client have to manually re-remove it every 90 days?
-
You have to remove the images via Google Webmaster Tools. This support document has the instructions: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/181721?hl=en
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
-
Google not Indexing images on CDN.
My URL is: http://bit.ly/1H2TArH We have set up a CDN on our own domain: http://bit.ly/292GkZC We have an image sitemap: http://bit.ly/29ca5s3 The image sitemap uses the CDN URLs. We verified the CDN subdomain in GWT. The robots.txt does not restrict any of the photos: http://bit.ly/29eNSXv. We used to have a disallow to /thumb/ which had a 301 redirect to our CDN but we removed both the disallow in the robots.txt as well as the 301. Yet, GWT still reports none of our images on the CDN are indexed.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alphonseha
The above screenshot is from the GWT of our main domain.The GWT from the CDN subdomain just shows 0. We did not submit a sitemap to the verified subdomain property because we already have a sitemap submitted to the property on the main domain name. While making a search of images indexed from our CDN, nothing comes up: http://bit.ly/293ZbC1While checking the GWT of the CDN subdomain, I have been getting crawling errors, mainly 500 level errors. Not that many in comparison to the number of images and traffic that we get on our website. Google is crawling, but it seems like it just doesn't index the pictures!?
Can anyone help? I have followed all the information that I was able to find on the web but yet, our images on the CDN still can't seem to get indexed.
0 -
Should I use meta noindex and robots.txt disallow?
Hi, we have an alternate "list view" version of every one of our search results pages The list view has its own URL, indicated by a URL parameter I'm concerned about wasting our crawl budget on all these list view pages, which effectively doubles the amount of pages that need crawling When they were first launched, I had the noindex meta tag be placed on all list view pages, but I'm concerned that they are still being crawled Should I therefore go ahead and also apply a robots.txt disallow on that parameter to ensure that no crawling occurs? Or, will Googlebot/Bingbot also stop crawling that page over time? I assume that noindex still means "crawl"... Thanks 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ntcma0 -
Slug best practices?
Hello, my team is trying to understand how to best construct slugs. We understand they need to be concise and easily understandable, but there seem to be vast differences between the three examples below. Are there reasons why one might be better than the others? http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/06/20/bad-boys-yum-yum-violent-criminal-or-not-this-mans-mugshot-is-heating-up-the-web/ http://hollywoodlife.com/2014/06/20/jeremy-meeks-sexy-mug-shot-felon-viral/ http://www.tmz.com/2014/06/19/mugshot-eyes-felon-sexy/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheaterMania0 -
Number of images on Google?
Hello here, In the past I was able to find out pretty easily how many images from my website are indexed by Google and inside the Google image search index. But as today looks like Google is not giving you any numbers, it just lists the indexed images. I use the advanced image search, by defining my domain name for the "site or domain" field: http://www.google.com/advanced_image_search and then Google returns all the images coming from my website. Is there any way to know the actual number of images indexed? Any ideas are very welcome! Thank you in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau1 -
What is the best URL structure for categories?
A client's site currently uses the URL structure: www.website.com/�tegory%/%postname% Which I think is optimised fairly well, as the categories are keywords being targeted. However, as they are using a category hierarchy, often times the URL looks like this: www.website.com/parent-category/child-category/some-post-titles-are-quite-long-as-they-are-long-tail-terms Best practise often dictates (such as point 3 in this Moz article) that shorter URLs are better for several reasons. So I'm left with a few options: Remove the category from the URL Flatten the category hierarchy Shorten post titles two a word or two - which would hurt my long tail search term traffic. Leave it as it is What do we think is the best route to take? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | underscorelive0 -
Blocking Pages Via Robots, Can Images On Those Pages Be Included In Image Search
Hi! I have pages within my forum where visitors can upload photos. When they upload photos they provide a simple statement about the photo but no real information about the image,definitely not enough for the page to be deemed worthy of being indexed. The industry however is one that really leans on images and having the images in Google Image search is important to us. The url structure is like such: domain.com/community/photos/~username~/picture111111.aspx I wish to block the whole folder from Googlebot to prevent these low quality pages from being added to Google's main SERP results. This would be something like this: User-agent: googlebot Disallow: /community/photos/ Can I disallow Googlebot specifically rather than just using User-agent: * which would then allow googlebot-image to pick up the photos? I plan on configuring a way to add meaningful alt attributes and image names to assist in visibility, but the actual act of blocking the pages and getting the images picked up... Is this possible? Thanks! Leona
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HD_Leona0 -
How To Best Close An eCommerce Site?
We're closing down one of our eCommerce sites. What is the best approach to do this? The site has a modest link profile (a young site). It does have a run of site link to the parent site. It also has a couple hundred email subscribers and established accounts. Is there a gradual way to do this? How do I treat the subscribers and account holders? The impact won't be great, but I want to minimize collateral damage as much as possible. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AWCthreads0 -
What is the best way to embed PDF documents for SEO?
I have been using SCRIBD to embed PDF documents on my site but until recently I did not include the link back to SCRIBD. Will my site get credit for this content or will it go to SCRIBD? Is there a better way to embed PDF documents for SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | casper4340
