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
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • 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.

      Let your reputation grow with Reviews AI
      Moz Local

      Let your reputation grow with Reviews AI

      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.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • 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.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • 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.

      • 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. NoIndexing Massive Pages all at once: Good or bad?

    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.

    NoIndexing Massive Pages all at once: Good or bad?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    5
    6
    674
    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.
    • WebServiceConsulting.com
      WebServiceConsulting.com last edited by

      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?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Dr-Pete
        Dr-Pete Staff last edited by

        If you're not currently suffering any ill effects, I probably would ease into it, just because any large-scale change can theoretically cause Google to re-evaluate a site. In general, though, getting these results pages and tag pages out of the index is probably a good thing.

        Just a warning that this almost never goes as planned, and it can take months to fully kick in. Google takes their sweet time de-indexing pages. You might want to start with the tag pages, where a straight NOINDEX probably is a solid bet. After that, you could try rel=prev/next on the search pagination and/or canonical search filters. That would keep your core search pages indexed, but get rid of the really thin stuff. There's no one-sized-fits-all solution, but taking it in stages and using a couple of different methods targeted to the specific type of content may be a good bet.

        Whatever you do, log everything and track the impact daily. The more you know, the better off you'll be if anything goes wrong.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • MoosaHemani
          MoosaHemani Banned last edited by

          At the moment you are in Google but not really following the Google guidelines as far as the thin content is concern... once you will apply the rule you will be more nearer to Google guidlines which simply means Google will love you more...so no big problems!

          You might see a lil ups and downs in traffic but it will be ok within days of time!

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • CleverPhD
            CleverPhD @WebServiceConsulting.com last edited by

            It may take a while when the pages you are deindexing are not crawled as often by Google.  You just have to sit back and wait a bit.

            Two other points.

            Look in your Analytics.  If you delete all those pages, how much traffic do they bring in to start with?  If it is only 5% of traffic, then expect to lose that much.

            One correction on the use of robots.txt vs the meta tag.  Robot.txt stops Google from crawling, but will not remove pages from SERPs.  Noindex meta tags on page will get them removed.  Use the former and you will be happier.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • WebServiceConsulting.com
              WebServiceConsulting.com last edited by

              As far as google crawling and de-indexing all of the pages with the noindex tag, is that a time consuming process before all of the pages are removed?

              CleverPhD 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • jesse-landry
                jesse-landry last edited by

                No negative impacts here as far as penalties or otherwise. Just make sure it's really what you want to do. If the page would ever be searched for by a user then keep it indexed regardless of how thin you worry the content might be. Or beef it up.

                Also consider using your robots file instead of having to add that tag to all these pages...

                -my two cents.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • 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

                • seoanalytics

                  Fresh page versus old page climbing up the rankings.

                  Hello, I have noticed that if publishe a webpage that google has never seen it ranks right away and usually in a descend position to start with (not great but descend). Usually top 30 to 50 and then over the months it slowly climbs up the rankings. However, if my page has been existing for let's say 3 years and I make changes to it, it takes much longer to climb up the rankings Has someone noticed that too ? and why is that ?

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics
                  0
                • KaranX

                  Submitting Same Press Release Content to Multiple PR Sites - Good or Bad Practice?

                  I see some PR (press release) sites where they distribute the same content on many different sites and at end they give the source link is that Good SEO Practice or Bad ? If it is Good Practice then how Google Panda or other algorithms consider it ?

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KaranX
                  0
                • Inevo

                  Why does Google rank a product page rather than a category page?

                  Hi, everybody In the Moz ranking tool for one of our client's (the client sells sport equipment) account, there is a trend where more and more of their landing pages are product pages instead of category pages. The optimal landing page for the term "sleeping bag" is of course the sleeping bag category page, but Google is sending them to a product page for a specific sleeping bag.. What could be the critical factors that makes the product page more relevant than the category page as the landing page?

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Inevo
                  0
                • jnew929

                  Is it bad for SEO to have a page that is not linked to anywhere on your site?

                  Hi, We had a content manager request to delete a page from our site. Looking at the traffic to the page, I noticed there were a lot of inbound links from credible sites. Rather than deleting the page, we simply removed it from the navigation, so that a user could still access the page by clicking on a link to it from an external site. Questions: Is it bad for SEO to have a page that is not directly accessible from your site? If no: do we keep this page in our Sitemap, or remove it? If yes: what is a better strategy to ensure the inbound links aren't considered "broken links" and also to minimize any negative impact to our SEO? Should we delete the page and 301 redirect users to the parent page for the page we had previously hidden?

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jnew929
                  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
                • fabioricotta-84038

                  How long takes to a page show up in Google results after removing noindex from a page?

                  Hi folks, A client of mine created a new page and used meta robots noindex to not show the page while they are not ready to launch it. The problem is that somehow Google "crawled" the page and now, after removing the meta robots noindex, the page does not show up in the results. We've tried to crawl it using Fetch as Googlebot, and then submit it using the button that appears. We've included the page in sitemap.xml and also used the old Google submit new page URL https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url Does anyone know how long will it take for Google to show the page AFTER removing meta robots noindex from the page? Any reliable references of the statement? I did not find any Google video/post  about this. I know that in some days it will appear but I'd like to have a good reference for the future. Thanks.

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fabioricotta-84038
                  0
                • s_EOgi_Bear

                  Wordpress Tag Pages - NoIndex?

                  Hi there. I am using Yoast Wordpress Plugin. I just wonder if any test have been done around the effects of Index vs Noindex for Tag Pages? ( like when tagging a word relevant to an article ) Thanks 🙂 Martin

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | s_EOgi_Bear
                  0
                • chunkyvittles

                  Why does my home page show up in search results instead of my target page for a specific keyword?

                  I am using Wordpress and am targeting a specific keyword..and am using Yoast SEO if that question comes up.. and I am at 100% as far as what they recommend for on page optimization. The target html page is a "POST" and not a "Page" using Wordpress definitions. Also, I am using this Pinterest style theme here http://pinclone.net/demo/ - which makes the post a sort of "pop-up"  - but I started with a different theme and the results below were always the case..so I don't know if that is a factor or not. (I promise .. this is not a clever spammy attempt to promote their theme - in fact parts of it don't even work for me yet so I would not recommend it just yet...) I DO show up on the first page for my keyword.. however.. instead of Google showing the page www.mywebsite.com/this-is-my-targeted-keyword-page.htm Google shows www.mywebsite.com in the results instead. The problem being - if the traffic goes only to my home page.. they will be less likely to stay if they dont find what they want immediately and have to search for it.. Any suggestions would be appreciated!

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chunkyvittles
                  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
                • Digital Marketers
                Free SEO Tools
                • Domain Authority Checker
                • Link Explorer
                • Keyword Explorer
                • Competitive Research
                • Brand Authority Checker
                • Local Citation 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.