A few rules can apply to NOODP & NOYDIR Meta Tags in the source code of a website. A meta tag is a unique HTML tag that provides information about a web page/post. Unlike regular HTML tags, meta tags do not affect how the page is displayed. Instead, they provide data, such as who created the page, how often it is updated, what the page is about, or the contextual website keywords.
Many search engines like Google, Bing, or Yandex and indexing platforms like Yahoo employ this information in building their indexes, examining them along with many factors to determine the position of a search. Meta tags are, therefore, an essential part of the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) algorithm, and therefore, their optimization is an integral part of the SEO of a website.
Remember, a Sitemap Index is a file that contains a list of links to Sitemaps for a particular website. In most cases, a Sitemap File is used to overcome the size limitation of a single website structure document. Google can read a sitemap index and then crawl each sitemap file listed within it. This means that in content SEO audit, an effective meta robots file in place is invaluable.
Just like not indexing your archive pages will prevent duplicate content within your website, adding a ‘No ODP’ or ‘ No YDIR’ to your meta robots file is also highly recommended. Adding a no-index to your archive pages and posts will prevent duplicate content within your website. Serving similar content is not good because Google doesn’t like it, and it can lead to lower rankings.
Understanding What The NOODP & NOYDIR Meta Tags Entail In Content Auditing
On the one hand, NOODP stands for NO Open Directory Project. They refer to a meta tag set on websites. Its purpose is to prevent search engines from using the title and meta description data from an ODP public directory (DMOZ). In other words, NOODP is a tiny, convenient tag element that prevents crawler bots from importing the directory listing as the description for organic search results.
On the other hand, NOYDIR meta tags also works the same as the NOODP meta tags. NOYDIR is another tag introduced by Yahoo! It functions much like NOODP and works by excluding titles and abstracts from Yahoo. NOODP (No Open Directory Project) is a directive that tells the search engine crawlers not to use metadata from the Open Directory Project for titles or snippets.
Notwithstanding, the Open Directory Project for titles or snippets is often displayed in search results for a particular page. By all means, to ensure a search engine platform like Google, Bing, or AOL knows about all the pages on your site, it’s a good idea to create and submit a Sitemap. This helps us crawl and index pages we might not discover through our normal crawling process.
Remember, through the unique Crawling Process, most search engines can find your website content. It’s the process of finding new or updated pages to add to Google (Google crawled my website). One of the Google crawling engines crawls (requests) the page. The terms “crawl” and “index” are often used interchangeably, although they are different (but closely related) actions.
How To Block Search Indexing For Your Website With A noindex Meta Tag
At all costs, Indexing means Googlebot Crawler has visited a website, analyzed its content and meaning, and stored in the index. Indexed pages can be shown in Google Search results (if they follow the Google Search Essentials). While most pages are crawled before indexing, Google may also index them without access to their content (if a page is blocked by a robots.txt directive).
To enumerate, a noindex is a rule set with either a <meta> tag or HTTP response header and is used to prevent indexing content by search engines that support the noindex rule, such as Google. When Googlebot crawls that page and extracts the tag or header, Google will drop that page entirely from Google Search results, regardless of whether other websites link to it.
Resource Reference: Site Taxonomy SEO | Categories, Tags & Archives Audit Tips
In most cases, using noindex is useful if you don’t have root access to your server, as it allows you to control access to your site on a page-by-page basis. Notably, there are two ways to implement noindex: as a <meta> tag and as an HTTP response header. They have the same effect; choose the method that is more convenient for your site and appropriate for the content type.
Unfortunately, specifying the noindex rule in the robots.txt file is not supported by Google. You can also combine the noindex rule with other rules that control indexing. For example, you can join a nofollow hint with a noindex rule: <meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow" />.
Implementing The <meta> Tag Rule For No Index
If you use a CMS, such as Wix, WordPress, or Blogger, you might not be able to edit your HTML directly, or you might prefer not to. Instead, your CMS might have a search engine settings page or some other mechanism to tell search engines about meta tags. Thus, if you want to add a meta tag to your website, search for instructions about modifying the <head> of your page on your CMS.
For example, you can search for “Wix add meta tags” on your Wix-powered CMS website. To prevent all search engines that support the noindex rule from indexing a page on your website, you can place a few lines of <meta> tag codes into the <head> section.
To prevent all search engines from indexing a page::
<meta name="robots" content="noindex">
To prevent only Google web crawlers from indexing a page:
<meta name="googlebot" content="noindex">
Be aware that some search engines might interpret the noindex rule differently. As a result, it is possible that your page might still appear in results from other search engines.
Optimizing The HTTP Response Header With No Index Rule
Equally important, instead of a <meta> tag, you can return an X-Robots-Tag HTTP header with a value of either noindex or none in your response. A response header can be used for non-HTML resources, such as PDFs, video files, and image files. Here’s an example of an HTTP response with an X-Robots-Tag header instructing search engines not to index a page:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK (...) X-Robots-Tag: noindex (...)
Debugging The Website Issues With noindex Meta Tag Rules
Search engines have to crawl your website content (pages and posts) in order to see <meta> tags and HTTP headers. If a page is still appearing in results, it’s probably because they haven’t crawled the page since you added the noindex rule. Depending on the importance of the page on the internet, it may take months for crawling bots to revisit a specific website page or post.
You can request that Google recrawl a page using the URL Inspection Tool in your Search Console dashboard section. In addition, you can also have a look at this documentation about removals, that’s if you need to remove a page of your website quickly from Google’s search results. Another reason could also be that the robots.txt file is blocking the URL from Google web crawlers.
For your information, this means that they can’t see the tag. In that case, to unblock your page from Google, you must edit your robots.txt file accordingly and then make a request for re-crawling and indexing. Next, you can further tweak your noindexing elements using an SEO Plugin such as AIOSEO that has inbuilt NOODP & NOYDIR meta tag features in its application system tool.
How To Implement The NOODP & NOYDIR noindex Meta Tag Rules
Previously, being listed in the DMOZ Directory was synonymous with security. However, for professional creation and maintenance of websites, it was impossible to establish the title and meta description that search engines offered in the SERPs. That is why it is advisable to resort to NOODPs. By doing so, you can choose meta titles and meta descriptions independently.
On the one hand, the meta title directly affects the positioning; on the other hand, the meta description helps to attract Internet users, thus increasing the number of visits to a site. The function of the NOODP is clear: it allows search engine robots to warn them whether or not they should enter the web page in which the tag is inserted. There are many benefits of using the “NOODP” tags.
One is that you can prevent search engines from choosing random descriptions. Any webmaster has to consider the use of NOODP. The professional must establish the criteria that are being chosen for the website. The implementation of the tag will be considered relevant depending on the environment (do not forget that using it allows the chosen URLs to be invisible to users).
For Example:
<meta name = “googlebot” content = “NOODP”>
If you have a problem with MSN, you can use:
<meta name = “msnbot” content = “NOODP”>
With that in mind, if you see a message that your website isn’t indexed, it could be for a number of reasons. For instance, if your website has no links to it from other websites on the web, Google may not have discovered it yet. The best way to get other sites to link to you is to create high-quality, useful, original content. At the same time, creating Google-friendly websites is also essential.
Some of the reasons are as follows:
- Your website may be indexed under a different domain.
- For example, it may be indexed as
http://example.cominstead ofhttp://www.example.com. - Ensure that you’ve also added
http://www.example.comto your account (or vice versa), and check the data for that website. - If your website is new, most search engines may not have crawled and indexed it yet.
- On that note, ensure that you notify Google about your website to have its content crawled and indexed.
Not all websites have URLs in the form www.example.com. Your root URL may not include the www subdomain (example.com); it may include a custom subdomain (rollergirl.example.com); or your site may live in a subfolder, for example if it’s hosted on a free hosting site (www.example.com/rollergirl/).
Most people don’t think of www as a subdomain. It’s a very, very common subdomain, and many sites serve the same content whether you access them with or without the www. But to Google, example.com and www.example.com are two different URLs with the potential to serve different content. For this reason, they’re considered different sites in Search Console.
A Search Console property defined without a path at the end (example.com/mypath/), but may include a protocol (http or https). Technically, when looking at the data for www.example.com you’ll not see the data for example.com (without the wwwsubdomain), and vice versa. Therefore, besides working out on your NOODP & NOYDIR Meta Tags, ensure your URL paths are okay.
The NOODP & NOYDIR Advantages:
- One, they are usually invisible.
- Two, using these tags prevents the website URL descriptions from being displayed.
- Three, they allow you to specify whether or not robots can access your website content.
The NOODP & NOYDIR Disadvantages:
- Firstly, they are only used to alter the description made by DMOZ.
- Secondly, its usefulness depends on whether you are registered with DMOZ.
Finally, ensure that the noindex rule is visible to the Googlebot crawling tool. To test if your noindex implementation is correct, use the URL Inspection Tool to see the HTML that Googlebot received while crawling the page. You can also use the Page Indexing Report Section in Search Console to monitor the pages on your website from which Googlebot extracted a noindex rule.
Summary Notes:
Generally speaking, a Sitemap is a structured file that tells search engines where to find pages, images, videos, and more on your site, along with additional information about these URLs (such as the last modified date). Markedly, these are very useful tools that help search engines find the important parts of your website. Most web hosting platforms automatically generate a sitemap for you.
As a rule of thumb, it is important for a company to resort to the use of NOODP & NOYDIR meta tags in their content auditing process for SEO purposes. In simple terms, the use of NOODP & NOYDIR meta tags element through an HTML code will allow certain links on the website to be invisible. In short, its mission will be to prevent search engine bots from tracking those URL links.
Resource Reference: Why You Should No-index Archives In Your WordPress Blog
Always remember that for the noindex rule to be effective, the page or resource must not be blocked by a robots.txt file, and it has to be otherwise accessible to the crawler. If the page is blocked by a robots.txt file or the crawler can’t access the page, the crawler will never see the noindex rule. Though, as a result, the page can still appear in search results, for example if other pages link to it.
In layman’s language, being clear about what is intended on the website is essential to manage the way of approaching labels. In any case, the main objective will always be to achieve greater importance for the website. Be that as it may, you can always Contact Us if you need more support or help implementing your meta tags (Tags & Categories) on your website from our webmasters.
