Dynamically Inserting Noindex With Javascript
-
Hello,
I have a broken plugin creating hundreds of WP-Content directory pages being indexed by Google. I can not access the source code of these pages to add a noindex to them. The page URL's all have the plugin name within them. In order to resolve the issue, I wrote a solution with javascript to dynamically add in a noindex tag to any URL containing the plugin name. Would this noindex be respected by Google and is there a way to immediately check that it is respected?
Currently, I can not delete the plugin due to issues with it's php.
If you would like to view the code: https://codepen.io/trodrick/pen/Gwwaej?editors=0010
Thanks!
-
Perfect! Happy to help!
-
It seemed to work. Hopefully the noindex is respected, thank you!
-
You can! Via https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663419?hl=en
- If you choose to hide a directory, then any file or directory starting with the prefix you supply will be blocked. So if you enter /folder, then /folder/somefile, foldername/somefile, and /folder.html will all be blocked.
- To hide an entire site, leave the path empty.
-
It looks like it is active. Thanks, John! Can you no-index an entire directory in GSC? I thought it was only per URL.
-
Hey there! Do you have a link to a page where it's implemented live? As long as you have the no-index, no follow in there, you should be okay. Other things you can do:
1. Use robots.txt to hide the directory of pages that the plugin is outputting
2. Sign into the Google Search Console and no-index the same directory
I would do 1 and 2 to help speed up things once the no-index, no-follow tag is in place.
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
-
Googlebot crawl error Javascript method is not defined
Hi All, I have this problem, that has been a pain in the ****. I get tons of crawl errors from "Googlebot" saying a specific Javascript method does not exist in my logs. I then go to the affected page and test in a web browser and the page works without any Javascript errors. Can some help with resolving this issue? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | FreddyKgapza0 -
"Noindex, follow" for thin pages?
Hey there Mozzers, I have a question regarding Thin pages. Unfortunately, we have Thin pages, almost empty to be honest. I have the idea to ask the dev team to do "noindex, follow" on these pages. What do you think? Has someone faced this situation before? Will appreciate your input!
Technical SEO | | Europarl_SEO_Team0 -
Different user experience with javascript on/off
I was wondered if the site is serving different user experience when JS is disabled is sort of cloaking
Technical SEO | | John_Smith_0 -
Exclude Noindex, Followed pages from sitemap?
Hello Everyone! This is a question about my site, which is running on WordPress. Currently, I have category page to have the noindex, follow attributes, as they have little unique content. I do have them currently in my sitemap.xml file, however. Should I remove them from the sitemap since Google technically shouldn't index them? Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | Zachary_Russell0 -
Why use noindex, follow vs rel next/prev
Look at what www.shutterstock.com/cat-26p3-Abstract.html does with their search results page 3 for 'Abstract' - same for page 2-N in the paginated series. | name="robots" content="NOINDEX, FOLLOW"> |
Technical SEO | | jrjames83
| | Why is this a better alternative then using the next/prev, per Google's official statement on pagination? http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1663744 Which doesn't even mention this as an option. Any ideas? Does this improve the odds of the first page in the paginated series ranking for the target term? There can't be a 'view all page' because there are simply too many items. Jeff0 -
Dynamic Parameters in URL
I have received lots of warnings because of long urls. Most of them are because my website has many Attributes to FILTER out products. And each time the user clicks on one, its added to the URL. pls see my site here: www.theprinterdepo.com The warning is here: Although search engines can crawl dynamic URLs, search engine representatives have warned against using over 2 parameters in any given URL. The question to the community is: -What should I do? These attributes really help the user to find easier the products. I could remove some of the attributes, I am not sure if my ecommerce solution (MAGENTO), allows to change the behavior of this so that this does not use querystring parameters.
Technical SEO | | levalencia10 -
Link juice distributed to too many pages. Will noindex,follow fix this?
We have an e-commerce store with around 4000 product pages. Although our domain authority is not very high (we launched our site in February and now have around 30 RD's) we did rank on lots of long tail terms, and generated around 8000 organic visits / month. Two weeks ago we added another 2000 products to our existing catalogue of 2000 products, and since then our organic traffic dropped significantly (more than 50%). My guess is that link juice has been distributed to too many pages, causing rankings to drop on overall. I'm thinking about noindexing 50% of the product pages (the ones not receiving any organic traffic). However, I am not sure if this will lead to more link juice for the remaining 50% of the product pages, or not. So my question is: if I noindex,follow page A, will 100% of the linkjuice go to page B INSTEAD of page A, or will just a part of the link juice flow to page B (after flowing through page A first)? Hope my question is clear 🙂 P.s. We have a Dutch store, so the traffic drop is not a Panda issue 🙂
Technical SEO | | DeptAgency0 -
How much javascript does Googlebot read
We have a site where we have certain navigational links solely for the human user. These links help the user experience and lead to pages that we don't need crawled by googlebot. We have these links in javascript so if you disable javascript these links are invisible. Will these links be considered cloaking even though our intention is not to cloak but save our Google crawl for pages we do want indexed?
Technical SEO | | CruiseControl0
