Being indexed means being indexed, and when we talk about Google’s index, it means the list provided to Google. But what does this word mean? When content from your site is indexed in Google, it is included in the list of sites that will be shown to users in search results.
When a page is noindex, it will not be shown in the Google results list. Every page should not be indexed, and every page should not be reindexed. There are rules in this field that people who have a site should be aware of these rules.
As an SEO expert, it’s important to stay up to date with Google’s latest updates and practices to make your site more visible to users and crawlers alike. One such update is the release of the noindex tag in July 2018, along with several other sitemap updates. Understanding why the noindex tag is important for anyone who wants their site to rank as optimally as possible.
Indexing a page or URL is not always necessary for search engines. There are many reasons why you might want to prevent search engine crawlers from finding and indexing certain pages on your website. One way to do this is to use noindex tags on pages you don’t want to appear in search engine results.
The noindex tag is one of the few meta tags that can be used with crawlable websites to help them rank better in search engines without harming their visibility. Search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing will ignore indexed links on a page if it has a noindex tag. We will talk to you in the rest of the article to learn more about these tags, why they are used, and how to implement them.
What is the Noindex tag, and why is it important?
At the beginning of the article, we explained the concept of indexing and reindexing, and in the following, we want to expand on this concept and talk more about it. For a page to be listed in the Google results list, crawlers and Google robots need to check the page and index and rank it. Only indexed sites are shown in the search results. If you have searched for the concept of a new index in Google and reached our page, our page has been indexed in Google and is listed in the results list.
For a page to be reindexed, this request for reindexing must be added as a meta tag to the Html source code section of the web page. This is one of the most common methods of reindexing website pages, and we will explain other methods below.
Search engines will know not to crawl these pages, which will help you avoid duplicate content issues and keep your site organized.
Why should websites use the Noindex tag?
There are several instances where a noindex tag can be useful. For example, if you have a page on your site that search crawlers don’t want to be indexed because it doesn’t have up-to-date information, you can use a noindex tag to prevent it from appearing in search results. Likewise, if you want a page accessible only to visitors who have logged in to your website, you can use this tag to prevent search crawlers from indexing the page. Noindex tags are also useful if you have pages in progress that are currently active on the web. If you add a noindex tag to this page, search crawlers will ignore it, thus preventing search engine results from cluttering when you launch your main site.
Where can you add a Noindex tag?
Noindex tags are hidden HTML elements that can be added to the head section of your website code. You can find this section of your code by opening a text editor and navigating to the root directory of your website, usually under “public_html.” Then open your website’s main HTML file (usually index.html or default.html) and look for the <head> tag. Noindex tags can be added to your pages by placing them between the <head> and <head/> tags. Just make sure not to put them inside the <body> tag, as this can cause problems for Google’s crawlers…
How to find and implement your Noindex tags?
You can find and implement your noindex tags using a search engine optimization tool like Ahrefs or SEMrush. Just type the URL of the page you want to block from the index, or open your website’s source code and search for the noindex tag. Once you’ve found your noindex tags, you can implement them by adding a code to your page’s source code.
Important key point!
You can use noindex tags to prevent search crawlers from indexing certain pages on your website. These tags are especially useful for blocking entire categories of pages, such as “About Us” pages or service or product pages intended for internal use only. However, it would help if you did not try to block the indexing of your website’s homepage or other important pages. Note that a noindex tag does not prevent the page from being found in organic search results. It simply tells search crawlers not to index the page. If you want to prevent your pages from being found in searches, you should use the nofollow tag
What is the difference between noindex and disallow?
The noindex tag is only one of the methods to ignore pages in Google, and there are other methods, such as disallow, that can get you to your goal. But what is the difference between disallow and new index? The difference is that in disallowing, you tell the search engine not to crawl your pages, which is done with the help of ROBOTS.TXT. But when is disallowed used?
Disallow is used when you have many pages, and these pages are neither useful for search engines nor for users and disallow generally prevents Google robots from crawling, but in the noindex tag, Google robots are allowed to crawl the pages. But it does not allow the index.
When you disallow a page, it’s like removing that page from Google’s point of view, and even if you have an external or canonical link on the page, Google won’t notice it. So if you want the links you create to have an impact, it is better to use the newindex tag.
Of course, note that disallowing is like a suggestion to Google, and Google may decide to crawl those pages and even index these pages!
How to use meta tag Noindex
Usually, in order to reindex a page, its tag is placed in the header part of the HTML codes. One thing to note is that in order for search engines to be able to see this information, you must make sure that your page is not blocked by the ROBOTS.TXT file.
If your page is disallowed or blocked in this file, it is possible that Google will not be able to see the newindex tag. If you want to use the newindex tag, you should put the code below in the head part of the html codes:
<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex, follow”>
The word Follow that you see at the end of the tag means that you want all the internal links that you put on this page to be followed. Although your page will not show up in search results, the links will be crawled and a credit will be transferred to the linked page.
Another way to use the new index tag is to use the following code in the html headers of the site.
X-Robots-Tag: noindex
What are the differences between robots tag and x-robots tag?
There are two terms that you should be familiar with so that you can use them. One of these terms is the robots meta tag and the other is the x-robots tag. Using the x-robots tag will cause your entire site to be de-indexed and your entire site will be removed from Google’s search page in all keywords.
This will happen to you if you use the x-robots tag as mentioned above (X-Robots-Tag: noindex) in the http header.
Recognize pages with noindex meta tag!
In order to find the pages that have the new index tag, we need to access the source of the pages that we want to see the new index tag. Accessing the source code is not difficult. To do this, just right-click on the desired page and click on View Page Source. After the page source is open, press control+f and search for robots.
Remove the noindex meta tag from the website
If you use content management systems such as WordPress, Joomla, etc., then you can add the desired codes manually when writing a new post. If the template you used for your site allows this, you can remove or use this tag from this section.
Note that if this tag is used by default in the site template, find the code used on the desired page in the main php file and delete it.
If you have used yoast plugin to add newindex tag, you can solve the problem as shown in the picture below.
By using the Yoast plugin, you can customize all the pages of your site.
Should we index the category and archive pages of the site or not?
Among the pages that can be useful for organic site traffic are archive and site category pages. Of course, what you should pay more attention to is that these pages can become both a threat and a problem for the site’s SEO.
What we expect from store category pages is that they should be an attractive landing page and have a comprehensive and complete description of the product we want to sell. But why these pages may be a problem for our SEO? When these pages rank for words you had other plans for, the story changes and the opportunity becomes a threat.
If it has created additional query and archive pages for you, you should set it in new index mode (of course, make sure to set it in follow mode). Note that this situation is not going to be permanent and you can decide to change this situation in another situation.
How to use Yoast to prevent pages from being indexed?
If you use the yoast plugin, you can use it to reindex the pages. For this, you need to enter the desired page and use the advanced section of yoast plugin to prevent indexing. The first question you will be asked is, do you allow search engines to display your text in search results? By default, this part is set to “Yes”, and if you change its status to “No”, the new index metatag will be automatically added to the page codes.
Note that if you remove an article from the index status, it will not be immediately removed from the results list because the crawlers must re-enter your page and, after understanding the changes applied, remove it from the results list. Delete the list of results.
Are the internal links of Navaindex pages valuable?
When you remove a page from the index, the Yoast plugin puts the internal links in follow mode by default, which means that search engines check the internal links of your page and follow them. They index. You may decide that this situation will turn out differently. In this case, what you need to do is to nofollow the links manually.
(Do not confuse indexing and no-following with each other. No-following means that you tell Google that you do not confirm the validity of the given links.)
How to fix the noindex error in Google Search Console?
We have two types of errors related to the new index metatag that can be seen in the search console. These errors are as follows:
Submitted URL marked ‘noindex’
If you use the newindex tag for a page and then want to index it, you will encounter this error. If you want to show a page in the search results, you must, first of all, remove the newindex tag from the page codes.
Excluded by ‘noindex’ tag
You will see this message when you use the noindex meta tag for the address of a page and the page is not shown in the search results. If you have reindexed this address by your own will, ignore the message. But if you have not requested noindex, you should remove the noindex tag.
Conclusion
The noindex tag is a meta tag that you can add to your pages to tell search engines not to index them. This does not affect page rank, but it does affect the crawler’s ability to discover and crawl your website. When search engines crawl your site, they do so by following all the links they find on your site. If you want to prevent a certain page from being indexed by search engines, you can use the noindex tag.