Last Updated on September 16, 2019
What are Noindexed Pages
Noindex pages are simply pages that you have told Google not to index. This means that Google won’t show these pages in a search result.
How Does Google React to Noindex
While it’s true that if a page is marked as noindex Google won’t show that page in the results, it doesn’t mean that page is ignored by Google. In 2012 Google stated that they do crawl noindexed pages, process the content, and follow the links; they just don’t show the page in the index. Matt Cutts confirmed that noindexed pages can pass PageRank.
When to Use Noindex
Noindex is useful for low-value content. This is content that you don’t want users to find from a search result or a page that you don’t want to affect your site’s authority. The page may still be able to be found through someone on your website if it’s has an internal link leading to it.
Example of situations you may want to noindex:
- Low-quality or ‘thin’ pages that you don’t want to delete
- Pages created for other marketing purposes (eg. email marketing or landing pages) that you don’t want users to land on.
- Any page that you want to hide from the general public: for example, a page that you only want people with a specific link to be able to find.
- User-generated content like forum pages.
Typically if the content is useful for the reader, then leave it indexed. Generally, only noindex pages that have very little SEO value, or pages you don’t want to be accessed via search results. This is includes PPC landing pages that are duplicates, or contain the same content as other main pages.
Should You Noindex Duplicate Content?
Whenever content on a site can be found at multiple URLs, it should be canonicalized for search engines, so no, typically you shouldn’t noindex duplicate content. A canonical tag (“rel canonical”) is a way of telling search engines that a specific URL represents the master copy of a page. Using the canonical tag prevents problems caused by identical or “duplicate” content appearing on multiple URLs. Practically speaking, the canonical tag tells search engines which version of a URL you want to appear in search results.
Learn more about canonical tags and how to use them.
Using Yoast to Noindex a Page
Yoast makes it very easy to noindex a page. Simply navigate to the page in WordPress, scroll down to the Yoast section, select the setting tab and under “Allow search engines to show this Post in search results?” select yes. Ask Jonny if you have a site that’s not WordPress and you can’t figure it out. You can also set links on the page to nofollow from this section, and create a canonical URL tag.
