Google Discusses NoIndex Options
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Monday, 25 of February , 2008 at 2:16 pm
According to Matt Cutts, Google is considering others ways of handling the NoIndex meta tag, as it relates to Search Engine Optimization. Of course, if he had his way he’d make sure none of the search engines indexed a page with the NoIndex meta tag. Currently, all the search engines have their own policies regarding NoIndex. Here’s the breakdown:
- Google doesn’t show the page in any way
- Ask doesn’t show the page in any way
- MSN shows a url reference and Cached link, but no snippet. Clicking the cached link doesn’t return anything.
- Yahoo! shows a url reference and Cached link, but no snippet. Clicking on the cached link returns the cached page.
Personally, I’d rather a page with the NoIndex meta tag not be shown any way at all than to be referenced and cached. I don’t want to click a link in a SERP and get a 404 error page or a page not returned for some reason.
Google currently doesn’t show a NoIndex page. But Cutts is wanting feedback to find out what web users expect. They are considering changing their policy and Matt Cutts points out some of the benefits of doing each possible way. Except that there are more than one way to find “some middle ground in between.”
One way that Google, and the other search engines, could handle NoIndex meta tags for pages that are popular and well known is to analyze whether they have any valuable back links as part of a website’s Search Engine Optimization. If not, then don’t show them. If so then go ahead and index it any way. If a webmaster lists the site in the ODP and has articles out there pointing at it and then decides to add a NoIndex meta tag, they aren’t really serious about NoIndexing. For them, it is likely a temporary situation. The search engines could add another tag - a temporary, or timed, NoIndex - that allows webmasters to NoIndex a certain web page, or an entire web site, for a timed period and once that time period has expired they appear in the SERPs again. That way, webmasters who have issues that need to be fixed can fix their issues during that time period and return to the SERPs. The NoIndex tag can be reserved for parked domains and such.
- Add this post to Del.icio.us - Digg
No comments yet.
