Canonical from NOINDEX,FOLLOW pages - Bad idea?
-
Hi,
We have an extensive online shop in Magento - to ensure that some of the pages with query strings are not indexed, we implemented a conditional NOINDEX,FOLLOW so that it will stop indexing any pages that have querystrings on it -
We do need to use Canonical also - for other reasons - so my question is:
If you have a page that is NOINDEX,FOLLOW and it has a rel canonical pointing to original, would it transfer that NOINDEX,FOLLOW to the main original page causing it problems?
Thanks!
-
Hi there
No, the canonical will not pass the meta robots directive to the original page, so you're safe there.
What you're effectively doing is using two ways to prevent duplication - the canonical will instruct web crawlers not to index versions of the URL with query strings, just as the noindex,nofollow tags will.
Nothing wrong with using two methods simultaneously to do this - always a good idea to be safe - and so the end result will be that the URLs with query strings will be very, very unlikely to be indexed.
-
There was a very good article from Dr. Pete about HTTP status.
Canonicals do not transfer information like noindex, follow.
What they transfer is the incoming "link juice" to the original version of the page. So basically it counts as a redirect for Search Engines without redirecting the visitor, which means it won't be indexed (the non-original version) and all the link juice that the page got will be transferred to the original version.
I hope it helps,
Istvan
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 Drop Following Negative Article in New York Times
I have two sites that were mentioned in a negative article in The New York Times a couple weeks ago. They saw a good increase in traffic, but on the sixth both of them saw sudden unexplained Google drops. Both seemed on the average position from search console doubling overnight. I run similar websites that have seen no such drops. The only thing these two have in common are being mentioned in the same negative article. Normally I would expect the mention from a major news outlet to make the sites more authoritative in Google's eyes. Is this a coincidence or a possible manual penalty? They still rank number one for their respected brand names, but everything else has suffered. Did Google make any recent algorithm changes or do you think someone at Google may have read the article and decided the sites needed to be demoted?
Algorithm Updates | | PostAlmostAnything0 -
Do orphan pages take away link juice?
Hi, Just wondering about this whether the orphan pages take away any link juice? We been creating lot of them these days only to link from external sites as landing pages on our site. So, not linking from any part of our website; just linking from other websites. Also, will they get any link juice if they are linked from our own blog-post? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz1 -
Page Rank on Moz compared to Ahrefs
So there seems to be a huge philosophical difference behind how Moz and Ahrefs calculates page rank (PA). On Moz, PA is very dependent on a site's DA. For instance, any new page or page with no backlinks for a 90DA site on Moz will have around 40PA. However, if a site has around 40 DA, any new page or page with no backlinks will have around 15PA PA. Now if one were to decide to get tons of backlinks to this 40 DA/15PA page, that will raise the PA of the page slightly, but it will likely never go beyond 40PA....which hints that one would rather acquire a backlink from a page on a high DA site even if that page has 0 links back to it as opposed to a backlink from a page on a low DA site with many, many backlinks to it. This is very different from how Ahrefs calculates PA. For Ahrefs, the PA of any new page or page with no backlinks to it will have a PA of around 8-10ish....no matter what the DA of the site is. When a page from a 40DA site begins acquiring a few links to it, it will quickly acquire a higher PA than a page from a 90DA site with no links to it. The big difference here is that for Ahrefs, PA for a given page is far more dependent on how many inbound links that page has. On the other hand, for Moz, PA for a given page is far more dependent on the DA of the site that page is on. If we were to trust Moz's PA calculations, SEOrs should emphasize getting links from high DA sites....whereas if we were to trust Ahref's PA calculations, SEOrs should focus less on that and more on building links to whatever page they want to rank up (even if that page is on a low DA site). So what do you guys think? Do you agree more with Moz or Ahref's valuation of PA. Is PA of a page more dependent on the DA or more dependent on it's total inbound links?
Algorithm Updates | | ButtaC1 -
Backlinks to internal pages help website to rank better or vice versa?
Hi Moz community, We have our backlinks mostly pointed to our homepage. We are trying to rank better and not having minimum number of backlinks to our internal pages is one of the things I worry about. Backlinks to homepage alone help in ranking internal pages or backlinks to internal pages help in ranking homepage? Or both required? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Does using parent pages in WordPress help with SEO and/or indexing for SERPs?
I have a law office and we handle four different practice areas. I used to have multiple websites (one for each practice area) with keywords in the actual domain name, but based on the recommendation of SEO "experts" a few years ago, I consolidated all the webpages into one single webpage (based on the rumors at the time that Google was going to be focusing on authorship and branding in the future, rather than keywords in URLs or titles). Needless to say, Google authorship was dropped a year or two later and "branding" never took off. Overall, having one webpage is convenient and generally makes SEO easier, but there's been a huge drawback: When my page comes up in SERPs after searching for "attorney" or "lawyer" combined with a specific practice area, the practice area landing pages don't typically come up in the SERPs, only the front page comes up. It's as if Google recognizes that I have some decent content, and Google knows that I specialize in multiple practice areas, but it directs everyone to the front page only. Prospective clients don't like this and it causes my bounce rate to be high. They like to land on a page focusing on the practice area they searched for. Two questions: (1) Would using parent pages (e.g. http://lawfirm.com/divorce/anytown-usa-attorney-lawyer/ vs. http://lawfirm.com/anytown-usa-divorce-attorney-lawyer/) be better for SEO? The research I've done up to this point appears to indicate "no." It doesn't make much difference as long as the keywords are in the domain name and/or URL. But I'd be interested to hear contrary opinions. (2) Would using parent pages (e.g. http://lawfirm.com/divorce/anytown-usa-attorney-lawyer/ vs. http://lawfirm.com/anytown-usa-divorce-attorney-lawyer/) be better for indexing in Google SERPs? For example, would it make it more likely that someone searching for "anytown usa divorce attorney" would actually end up in the divorce section of the website rather than the front page?
Algorithm Updates | | micromano0 -
Reasons for a sharp decline in pages crawled
Hello! I have a site I've been tracking using Moz since July. The site is mainly stagnant with some on page content updates. Starting the first week of December, Moz crawler diagnostics showed that the number of pages crawled decreased from 300 to 100 in a week. So did the number of errors through. So crawler issues went from 275 to 50 and total pages crawled went from 190 to 125 in a week and this number has stayed the same for the last 5 weeks. Are the drops a red flag? Or is it ok since errors decreased also? Has anyone else experienced this and found an issue? FYI: sitemap exists and is submitted via webmaster tools. GWT shows no crawler errors nor blocked URLs.
Algorithm Updates | | Symmetri0 -
Has anyone experienced a dramatic decrease in Google rankings followed by a dramatic increase in the past few days?
I don't want to be one of those whiny people always asking about rankings, but for the first time in a while, I've seen some crazy fluctuations in Google rankings. I was wondering if anyone had any similar experiences lately.
Algorithm Updates | | innovationsimple0 -
Trying to figure out why one of my popular pages was de-indexed from Google.
I wanted to share this with everyone for two reasons. 1. To try to figure out why this happened, and 2 Let everyone be aware of this so you can check some of your pages if needed. Someone on Facebook asked me a question that I knew I had answered in this post. I couldn't remember what the url was, so I googled some of the terms I knew was in the page, and the page didn't show up. I did some more searches and found out that the entire page was missing from Google. This page has a good number of shares, comments, Facebook likes, etc (ie: social signals) and there is certainly no black / gray hat techniques being used on my site. This page received a decent amount of organic traffic as well. I'm not sure when the page was de-indexed, and wouldn't have even known if I had't tried to search for it via google; which makes me concerned that perhaps other pages are being de-indexed. It also concerns me that I have done something wrong (without knowing) and perhaps other pages on my site are going to be penalized as well. Does anyone have any idea why this page would be de-indexed? It sure seems like all the signals are there to show Google this page is unique and valuable. Interested to hear some of your thoughts on this. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | NoahsDad0