Noindex
A rel=”noindex” directive is used to instruct search engines not to include a page within their index, to prevent it from appearing within search results. Our SEO Office Hours Notes below explain the use of this directive, along with further advice compiled from Google’s Office Hours sessions and real-world examples.
For more on noindex directives, check out our article: Noindex, Nofollow & Disallow.
Videos Blocking Googlebot May Still be Crawled and Indexed
Blocking Googlebot from crawling a video may still result in a video snippet appearing in search if the video file is embedded from a different location, if some Google datacentres haven’t yet seen the updated version or if the video URL has parameters attached.
Noindex & 410 Pages Are Removed Faster Than 404
Noindex and 410 remove pages from Google’s index at about the same speed, and both are slightly quicker than using a 404.
Adding Noindex with JavaScript Isn’t Recommended, Use Static HTML
If you add a noindex tag using JavaScript then its effects will be delayed as Google will only pick it up in the second wave of rendering and indexing. Google can read the tag after rendering but static HTML is recommended instead.
Noindexing Images Will Cause Omissions From Image Search & Video Search
Noindexed images won’t appear in Google image search and if a site hosts its own videos the thumbnail image won’t be indexed, meaning that the video won’t be indexed either.
Ensure All Product Pages Can be Crawled With Considered Use of Noindex
eCommerce sites with facets should be careful which pages are noindexed because this may make it difficult for Googlebot to crawl individual product pages e.g. noindexing all category pages. Webmasters might consider noindexing specific facets or deciding that everything after a certain number of pages in a paginated set be noindexed.
Noindex Errors Are Differentiated by Source of URL in the New Search Console
In the new Search Console the noindex errors are differentiated by the source of the URL. Google will assume an error on your side if you submit a noindexed URL, as opposed to finding noindexed URLs found through crawling.
Google Will Remember & Recrawl Noindexed Pages
Noindexed pages will be remembered and crawled by Google. They should be removed from sitemaps.
Use canonicalization Instead of Noindex for Duplicate Content
John recommends using rel=canonical instead of noindex in order to deal with duplicate content in the best way. This way the signals from both page versions can be combined rather than dropping all the signals from the noindexed page.
Nofollow Obsolete When Noindex Already Present
When a page is noindexed, not only will it be removed from the index but also over time all of the links associated with the page will be removed from the link graph so nofollow is made obsolete.
Tag Pages Are Usually Seen as Low Quality
Tag pages are usually low quality and look like search results pages, so it doesn’t make sense for Google to show them in search results and the prefer to show pages with content.