Meta Robots "Index, Follow"
-
In my MozBar under "General Attributes" it says "index, follow" next to Meta Roberts for one of our client's websites. I've never seen "index, follow" before. I've seen it say "not found." What does index, follow mean and is that a bad thing? I know the reason should be obvious but this site has had a lot of problems and I'm wondering if this is related.
-
Hello!
Index/Follow means that you are allowing search engines to index your pages and follow links through those pages. If you didn't have this tag on the page, search engines would do it anyway. Basically, this meta tag isn't necessarily a bad thing and the search engines would be doing it even if the tag wasn't there.
You can use meta robots to do good things for your site, such as stop the crawling of blog archive pages to limit duplicate content. There's tons of resources here on MOZ about the robots file and I would suggest looking into it. This is a good one: http://moz.com/learn/seo/robotstxt
What type of problems is your site having?
-
Thank you! That was very helpful!
-
What you're seeing is the page's meta robots tag, which instructs the search engine bots to (in this case) index a specific page and follow links on the page. The opposite, "noindex,nofollow" instructs the search bots to not include this page in its index or follow links on the page. You can also use "noindex, follow" so the search engine keeps the page out of its index, but still follows the links on the page. I personally have never come across an example of "index, nofollow" but I imagine that it's possible - probably more of an outdated practice though related to hoarding links.
If you've never seen this attribute before, it may be because the page doesn't include the tag (in which case the bots, by default, assume "index, follow"). And as for whether or not having it is a bad thing - probably not, unless it's a page you really don't want visible in search results.
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
-
Changed Domains and Internal Links haven't followed, Old Domain redirects to new domain
On our domain residentiallandlord.com we are a little confused on the Compare Link Profiles option,I'm wondering if you can helpWe changed our domain a few years back and have our old domain redirected to our new domain.On our new domain we have only internal links visible, https://residentiallandlord.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/moz-rl.com.pngbut if you look at our old domain, which goes to our new domain it has loads of internal links, even though there is no physical site on this domain as it redirects to our new one, https://residentiallandlord.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/moz-rl.co.uk.png Can you help me understand why no internal links are showing for the new domain and how to fix this.
Moz Bar | | karlh19740 -
What does "false" in the Mobile Friendly Column of the Ranking by Engine downloaded spreadsheet mean?
what does "false" in the Mobile Friendly Column of the Ranking by Engine downloaded spreadsheet mean?
Moz Bar | | TawnyKay1 -
"Keywords Showing" total doesn't match "Tracked Keywords" total
My "Tracked Keywords" total under "Add & Manage Keywords" does not match the total for "Keywords Showing" on the main "Rankings" tab. Why is there a difference? For example, I have 453 tracked keywords attached to my campaign, but under the "Tracked Keywords Overview," there are only 254 listed. I'm sure there's a simple explanation but I can't find it anywhere!
Moz Bar | | MSoleski0 -
MozBar > General Attributes > Meta Robots > noindex
I'm having a hard time figuring out where the noindex value for Meta Robots is coming from so I can fix it. Can anybody spot the issue or point me to some docs that show were the MozBar finds this information http://www.produnkhoops.com
Moz Bar | | tatermarketing0 -
I'm getting, "you're not using the rel="canonical" META attribute" in my crawl diagnotic
I'm running a campaign crawler through Moz on this particular page: http://www.henley.ac.uk/executive-education/leadership-and-management-programmes/ but I'm getting a notifcaiton from Moz saying, "you're not using the rel="canonical" META attribute" I don't understand what this means!! Has anyone else had this problem, or can they help me understand what this means and how to fix it? Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving from the UK! Virginia
Moz Bar | | blackboxideas0 -
On Page Grader - We have keyword in Meta Description But does not show up
The on-page grader is not counting/picking up the keyword in the meta description. We have double checked the meta description and re-uploaded the page, and checked the source code on-line. The keyword is there in meta description, but not showing up in on-page-grader. https://www.trustdeedrealestateinvesting.com/trimarkfunding/buy-first-trust-deeds.html keyword buy first trust deeds
Moz Bar | | Manifestation0 -
"Sorry! We weren't able to find that page when we crawled your site." Please help!
Can someone please explain whey I am getting this error for this link "http://lensoutloud.com/san-antonio-real-estate-photography/" when I attempt to perform an on page SEO grading? The link is indexed and ranking very well but for some reason Moz says it can't find the page when it crawled my site. This has also happened when I attempt to grade other pages on my site. Thanks in advance!
Moz Bar | | AndreGant0 -
Since the revised website was launched, I can't find the "Crawl Test" function showing Titles and Descriptions of other websites. Anyone know where that link is located?
MOZ can "crawl" any website and show information like Title, Description, etc.....Can't find that link.
Moz Bar | | bpedrazas0