Should i remove the nofollow from mediawiki?
-
We have a website which uses mediawiki for public documentation. The moz crawler keeps nagging us that 50% of our sites have the nofollow-metatag. (And noindex for that matter). This is information pages and such in mediawiki.
From a SEO perspective: Should we remove these tags? I assume they probably do not hurt?
If we shouldn't remove the tags: Is there any way to get moz to ignore these pages so we can get rid of this "noise" in the moz-panel?
-
The nofollows are automatically created by mediawiki.
I'll try to find a solution for removing them i guess. Thank you for your input.
-
Ahh ok I see now.
Even though you have a nofollow on your link in the navigation from your url to your wiki, the pages will still be indexed! Even if the links are not being followed by search engines they are still being indexed by them-just want to make that clear. Also, it's important to note that even if Google reads a nofollow tag they still have an option to follow it anyway. Because of the open source platform you are using, I'm not sure if there's a way to stop the crawl from indexing the link between your url and your wiki. That might take some fancy foot work. That would be the only way to get the nofollow percentage removed…but you really don't want your wiki pages to not be indexed anyway.
Moz is reflecting what the crawl bots see…such as Google. You can't tell it to not show you certain things unless you alter your code, .htaccss, or robots files to change the way the site is being crawled.
As I stated earlier…having a lot of nofollows doesn't necessarily hurt your SEO, but it will not bring you the benefits of followed links that pass link juice and page rank.
I understand it's hard to see the real issues to address when you are flooded with this other stuff, but I'm not sure you have many other options unless you want to remove the nofollows.
Just curious…why do you use so many nofollows anyway? Or is it automatically generated by wiki?
-
Hi Adam.
Thank you for the good replies.
The url to the wiki: http://docs.host1.no/wiki
Url to main page: https://host1.no
"Complaints" from the moz.com-engine:
#1: (mediawiki-problem)
Crawl Issue Found: Use of 'nofollow' Tag
49% of site pages are tagged with the nofollow META attribute#2: (mediawiki-problem)
Crawl Issue Found: 404 Errors
8% of site pages served 404 errors during the last crawlExample of sites Moz.com complains about noindex/nofollow on:http://docs.host1.no/w/index.php?title=Cloud1&action=infohttp://docs.host1.no/w/index.php?title=Cloud1&action=historyhttp://docs.host1.no/w/index.php?title=Cloud1&action=editAnd so on.I assume google won't mind this as it's pages that really don't need to be indexed. But it would be nice to get moz' crawler to ignore these errors as they might mask other actual problems by the amount of errors i get. When i get 1000+ errors from this it's hard to find the real problems.
-
I'm still not entirely sure about how your site is structured but I'll give it a shot…
Firstly, the noindex tag is only for pages. It tells the crawl to not index an entire page and stops it from ranking. That tag is meant for the section of the page. Nofollow tags are found within the link and are meant to stop the transfer of page authority…so you are essentially telling the crawler bots that the links are external and/or not totally relevant/trustworthy. Nofollow shouldn't be used really on internal links within your site pages because you want to spread the page rank and authority and receive the SEO benefits of that.
It's probably telling you there is a problem because you are essentially stopping the flow of link juice within your site and from sharing page rank and authority with other trustworthy/relevant sites.
So why have you made them nofollow in the first place? Maybe you can assess why and where to use the nofollow so that it is beneficial. I guess it's not necessarily a "problem" …but you are not receiving any possible benefits from limiting your nofollow links.
Hope that helps!
-
The links within the site (within mediawiki to be specific) is noindex + nofollow. This due to it being information-sites and such in mediawiki.
Not sure what to do with them, but it's fairly annoying that moz lists it as a problem with "1000 internal links having nofollow" if it's not really a problem at all.
-
Are you saying that your sites are noindex/nofollow or are the links within the site nofollow?
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
-
Should I nofollow certain outbound links?
Hi, All of our outbound links are currently follow.I've read that the only case where nofollow should be used, according to Google, is for paid links, crawl prioritization & untrustworthy sites.The kinds of websites we are linking to from our blog include:- Websites with great content & high authority that is relevant to the topic we've written about that would enhance the user experience- Partners/companies we have a strong relationship with who also have decent authority- Social media profiles of industry people not within our organisation - Websites with definitions/wikipedia/soundcloud/published statistics/news sites and other large well known sites. I am wondering if we should put the nofollow attribute on the last 2 points (social media profiles of people we've referenced, websites with definitions/wikipedia/soundcloud/published statistics/news sites and other large well known sites.)Or do you think it's totally fine that all our links are follow provided the websites are legitimate, trustworthy and have some authority?Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | PGAUE0 -
To NoFollow or to NoIndex internal links
I all, I have recently taken over a fairly large e-commerce site that I am trying to "fix" and have come across something that I need a second opinion on. A Semrush audit has revealed that there are a heck of a lot of internal nofollow links (over 90 000) that point to predominantly 4 pages from the Header of each page in the site, these are change currency pages to show clients different currencies and a members login page. The pages are: /?action=changecurrency¤cy=EUR /?action=changecurrency¤cy=USD /?action=changecurrency¤cy=GBP /members/ My opinion is that these pages should just be no index pages and they should be followed. instead of being indexed and no followed? Any thoughts on this out there?
On-Page Optimization | | cradut0 -
Nofollow links to own website pages
To preserve link juice should I "nofollow" links to about us and contact us pages that appear at the top of our navigation? I read this article - but I am not familiar with the authenticity: http://www.eminentseo.com/blog/navigation-menu-optimization-best-practices/ Thanks Mike
On-Page Optimization | | henandstag0 -
Nofollow on the logo
Hi I'm working on this site: www.nobelcom.com and on the logo I have a rel=nofollow. Do you think I should keep it, and is so way, or I should remove the nofollow (why?)
On-Page Optimization | | Silviu0 -
Should I Remove This Subdirectory From Google?
On my site, I have a subdirectory. It posts articles from a bunch of websites that my readers are interested in & links back to all of those sites. There is no original content in it. There are over 1700 indexed pages in this subdirectory. The rest of my site has about 500 (all original content). The search engine traffic for this subdirectory only accounts for 3.9% of my sites overall visits. Should I consider removing this subdirectory? Could all the duplicate content be hurting the rankings of my legit pages? What do you all think?
On-Page Optimization | | PedroAndJobu0 -
Remove internal site SERPS from Google Index?
1. Internal Serp pages did not have a robots meta tag 2. As a result, client site has thousands (~4,400) of internal site SERP pages in the Google index. 3. We added the NoIndex, Follow attribute to all internal SERPS 4. We Disallowed: domain.com/internal-search-operator in Robots.txt 5. No new SERP pages are being indexed, but the other 4000 something that were already there are still in the index weeks later. 6. The pages are dynamically created and still work, so I can't use the Remove Content tool from google, because the pages don't 404. Is there any way to get these pages out of the index besides just waiting and hoping google eventuall drops them? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | delegator.com0 -
404 link | How to remove the link so it is not found?
My report has listed a few links with 404 errors. They are internal links but are not found. Is there a way to remove that link so it is not found again? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | SavingSense0 -
Nofollow all outgoing links?
If nofollow keeps link juice from leaking from a site, why not use nofollow on all external links? What would be the benefit of an external link that does not use nofollow? Best, Christopher
On-Page Optimization | | ChristopherGlaeser0