What is noindex?
Google and Bing index (add to their library/register) most websites as they see fit, but the noindex tag is one of the most powerful tools we have to communicate our preferences to search engines about what should be indexed.
By adding the noindex tag to the code on a web page, we can tell Google and Bing that we want the page not to be included in the index. This will make the page impossible to find through organic search.
When should noindex be used?
There can be many reasons why you might not want a webpage to be visible in organic search. For example, it may be because you have pages with content that competes with each other, or auto-generated category pages and similar types of content.
It’s important to be a bit careful about adding noindex to too many pages at once, especially if you already have relatively limited content. Conduct a thorough content analysis so you can identify which pages truly compete with each other, or clearly do not need to appear in organic search.
How to add a noindex tag?
Many CMS platforms (publishing tools) have a built-in feature for adding noindex. In that case, you’ll see something like “Hide this page from search engines” or “Prevent search engines from finding this page.” If you can’t find this feature, check whether it’s possible to add custom code in the <head> section of the specific web page. If so, insert the following code snippet:
<meta name="robots" content="noindex">
Frequently Asked Questions:
What is noindex? Noindex is a meta tag that is added to web pages you want to remove from organic search.
How to add noindex? Many CMS have built-in functionality for this. You can also manually add a code snippet in the <head> section of the relevant web page.
