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    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. On-Page Optimization
    4. NoIndex or Rel=Canonical Pagination

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    NoIndex or Rel=Canonical Pagination

    On-Page Optimization
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    • chuck-layton
      chuck-layton last edited by

      Hello,

      I had a question about noindex and Rel=Canonical on category page pagination. On my site, the category page the meta="robots" has "Index,Follow" tags and the rel="canonical" is the main category page, but when a user sorts the page the meta="robots" changes to "NoIndex, Follow."

      My question is should the sorted page be name="robots" content="INDEX,FOLLOW" /> since the  rel="canonical" is pointing to the main page?? Or does it matter that it is NoIndex??

      Any thoughts on this topic would be awesome. Thanks.

      Main Category Page
      https://www.site.com/category/
      name="robots" content="INDEX,FOLLOW" />
      rel="canonical" href="https://www.site.com/category/"/>

      Name Sorted Page
      https://www.site.com/category/?dir=asc&order=name
      name="robots" content="NOINDEX, FOLLOW" />
      rel="canonical" href="https://www.site.com/category/">

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Martijn_Scheijbeler
        Martijn_Scheijbeler last edited by

        Hi Chuck,

        I would also look into categorizing your URL parameters in this case: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6080550?hl=en as this is inovlving both sorting and categorizing the data on the page it's a good solution to tell Google more about the intent that you have on this page.

        Martijn.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • davebuts
          davebuts last edited by

          Hi Chuck,

          It's strange to me that the "NOINDEX, FOLLOW" would be automatically added to these pages.

          The canonical tag is correct so I wouldn't use "noindex" here - it's redundant.

          John Mueller from Google recently explained why canonical and "noindex" shouldn't be used together: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-noindex-rel-canonical-confusion-26079.html

          Cheers,

          David

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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