The noindex tag and the nofollow attribute are different elements used in the page code. They serve different purposes and are used in different ways, but for better understanding they should be considered together.
Noindex is used to tell the Yandex robot that certain parts of a web page cannot be indexed. The tag is placed in the HTML code and has a closing tag. Content caught between the opening and closing tags will be ignored by the bot.
The noindex tag was invented by Yandex, and currently only two search engines take it into account: Yandex and Rambler. Bots from other search engines ignore the tag and still index the entire web page. In addition, the tag cannot prevent hyperlinks from being indexed and their weight being transferred to another web resource.
Validity
Tag
“Text that should not be indexed by Yandex”
Exclamation marks and hyphens are used to validate code. If you do not use these symbols (and write without them, as happens with regular tags), then the validity check will show an error.
If this tag is used correctly, the page will be correctly perceived by Yandex, Google and other search robots. In this case, Yandex will understand that some of the content should be excluded from indexing, and Google will conclude that there are no errors in the code and will index it completely. U search engine Google does not have a similar tag, despite the fact that such an element has many advantages.
When to use noindex
This tag brings undeniable benefits to the web resource. It is used when necessary:
hide part of the HTML code from bots, for example counter codes;
prohibit indexing of frequently changing web page text that is pointless to add to the index;
hide non-unique text fragments so as not to lose position in search results due to non-uniqueness.
Nofollow is not a tag, but an attribute used in a hyperlink tag . This attribute, understandable to all search robots, is used to prohibit following a link and transferring weight along it.
In code it looks like this:
This attribute is standardized in HTML, so all search bots understand it correctly and follow the instructions: they do not pass or pass weight. However, the link does not become invisible.
When to use nofollow
There are many situations in which this attribute is indispensable. Nofollow is used when required:
prohibit the transfer of weight to a web resource that search engines consider low-quality;
manage the number of links that should be taken into account by search engines;
prevent weight from being transferred across multiple links in comments.
When using nofollow, you need to be careful, because sites where all links are closed using this attribute do not inspire confidence among search engines.
The noindex and nofollow tags can be used as a value for the content attribute. This is necessary in order to instruct robots in the meta robots tag that there is no need to index anything on this page or follow the links posted on it.
So whether to use nofollow or noindex depends on the goals you want to achieve. For such purposes, there may be a need to hide part of the text, links, or prevent the entire page from being indexed. At the same time, noindex works only for Yandex, and nofollow works for all search engines.
Noindex is a tag and nofollow is an attribute of the tag . Noindex is used to prevent content from being indexed, and nofollow is used to prevent link clicking and weight transfer.
The Yandex search robot “walks” through sites, views and analyzes their content, and then saves a pointer to text and images in the Yandex search database. This process is called indexing. Part of a web page can be blocked from indexing by placing it inside an element
It is important to understand that this is a non-standard element and was invented by Yandex for its own purposes. Browsers don't support it at all
If you need to close the entire page for search engines, use the element by adding it to the HTML code:
Or add the following line to your robots.txt file:
Disallow: /private.html
Where is private.html the page address.
Syntax
Closing tag
Required.
Attributes
Example
Browsers
Browsers
The following notations are used in the browser table.
Let's start by outlining the different ways to use noindex and nofollow:
- Tag
- Meta tags And
Tag
Tag
Misconception #1. The main mistake people make when using this tag is to believe that if some text is placed between the opening and closing tags
The only thing this tag prohibits is placing content in an index database, but this content will be read and analyzed by the robot in any case.
Example: There is some text on a page on your site that uses direct occurrences of sentences from other third-party sources. Therefore, these sentences reduce the uniqueness of your text, and you need 100% uniqueness. You decide to close these sentences with the tag
Absolutely all the text on your page will be read and processed by the robot, and it will know that the text on your page is not unique.
The very essence of the tag
Let's assume that a search robot has visited your page and started crawling the content. At some point the robot finds the opening of the tag
Why then do you need a tag?
It is needed directly in order to prohibit the robot from providing any information in its search engine results. These could be, for example, contacts that for some reason should not be displayed in the search results.
Misconception No. 2. Another misconception that is often found among website owners is the opinion that a link placed in a tag
To the aid of webmasters who need the robot to still not take into account links from pages, the attribute comes to the rescue, which works for both Yandex and Google. When using this attribute, the link will still be studied by the robot and a click will be made on it, but without nofollow the weight will be transferred to the recipient, and with nofollow the weight will be burned.
Example 1:
Yandex does not index the anchor, but takes into account the link to the site and transfers weight to it
Example 2:
Yandex does not index the anchor and does not transfer weight via the link to the site
There are two ways to write a tag
1.
2. Text prohibited from indexing
The second option is more correct. Since the tag
Meta tags And
Using the noindex meta tag in the page code prohibits Yandex (Google, again, is not involved in this case) from indexing all the text content of the page, while the links will be fully analyzed. That is, the presence of this meta tag in the page code is not equivalent to closing the page from the index in robots.txt.
The presence of the nofollow meta tag in the page code prevents search engines from indexing links on the pages. Robots will also not follow links from the page if this meta tag is present. But here is what is written in Yandex help:
“The robot will not visit documents if they are linked from a page containing a nofollow meta tag, however, they can be indexed if they are linked to without nofollow in other sources.”
Let's sum it up
Tag
If we want the weight of the link not to be transferred to the recipient, then we use the nofollow attribute. At the same time, do not forget that the robot can still follow the link (if information about it is obtained from other sources: site map, links) and analyze the page to which it links. The method works for both Yandex and Google.
Nofollow is an attribute that is written for a specific link or all links on a page in robots in order to prohibit search robots from following them.
Noindex is an attribute that blocks text on the page.
That is, noindex is responsible for the content in the document and the ban on indexing it, while nofollow is responsible for the link.
Rules of application and why is nofollow needed?
To understand in what cases this attribute can be useful, let’s consider how the most popular search engines treat it.
- Yandex. When your resource contains sections specifically designed for discussing posts, writing comments on articles, or a forum, it is important to monitor what outgoing links visitors leave in them. Every comment is welcome. Thanks to this, the site owner will be able to prevent spammers from posting various malicious links. Although the search engine does not take them into account, spam greatly affects the reputation of a web resource and a filter can be applied to it. In this regard, you should check all comments, and if there are any doubts about the quality of the link being posted, write the rel=”nofollow” attribute for them. Now, in the modified Yandex manual, this text has been removed and only the rule for applying the Yandex manual about nofollow remains
- Google. If your site has a section where users can comment on posts, there is a high risk that the comments will contain links to malicious pages. Spammers love sites with unmoderated comments. The nofollow attribute for spam links will save your resource and maintain its clean reputation in the eyes of the search engine. If you trust the site to which the visitor links or you link yourself, then there is no need to register nofollow. Google's Guide to Nofollow
These messages are taken from the official websites of search engines. As you can see, similar things are written in Yandex and Google: the nofollow value should be used in cases where you want to inform the bots that you do not trust the site to which the link leads.
Let's consider a more specific example when a link requires a prohibiting attribute:
Material of questionable quality. If you do not like the content of the page to which a visitor leaves a link in a comment, and you do not want to sacrifice the reputation of your site, write the value rel=”nofollow” in the tags of this link. Spammers, having noticed a trend on your resource where a blocking attribute is added to unverified links, will soon stop trying to harm the site. If you see that a user leaves a link to high-quality material, you can delete nofollow manually or automatically.
How to correctly register nofollow?
Now nofollow allows you to manage each link separately, but once this value could only be used in the meta tag, which blocked absolutely all links on the page from the search engine. And to prevent certain links from being followed, webmasters had to block their URLs in .
Robots Nofollow
These meta tags remain to this day. If you want to block all links contained on a certain page from indexing, then on this page you need to write the following code:
It is important not to confuse this tag with the two codes below; content="none" and content="noindex, nofollow" block bots from accessing the entire page, not just its links. Therefore, if you want pages to be indexed, then under no circumstances write these two tags for them:
Above, we looked at options on how to prevent search robots from following all links on pages. But you can also set a ban on going to a specific link.
To prevent the robot from following a link for indexing, you need to add the rel=”nofollow” attribute to it; in the code it looks like this:
Does link weight leak through nofollow?
Although Google in its statements positions the use of the nofollow attribute as following a link. And this confirmed the appeal of the former head of the company against search spam, Matt Cuts. He stated that Google may consider links from social networks, even despite nofollow".
But with Yandex the issue is not obvious. He clearly writes in his documentation that this attribute prohibits the indexing of such links.
And if we go to the description of the robots nofollow attribute, then here we already see a ban on the transition, and not a word about indexing.
But previously it was possible to check this if you used the following url construction in the search: your url<< inlink:(“анкор ссылки”), и Яндекс нам отображал только те страницы, где содержится наш искомый . Сейчас же этот метод не работает, поисковая система Яндекс запретила использовать такую конструкцию в поиске. Поэтому можно с большей долью вероятностью сказать, что Яндекс может учитывать такие ссылки, потому что они появляются в Яндекс Вебмастер.
In general, we can say that the use of this attribute for search robots is not always prohibited, especially if the site is authoritative.
Should you close internal links in nofollow?
In the past, SEO optimizers greatly abused this by manipulating the transmitted weight within the site. Therefore, the Google search engine stated that all internal links marked will give weight to nowhere https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/.
The former head of search at Google talks about this in the video. The video is in English, so please turn on Russian subtitles.
The noindex attribute: what is it and how does it differ from nofollow?
Many novice webmasters are scratching their heads, not understanding how noindex differs from nofollow. It's simple:
- nofollow - applies to links
- noindex - applies to text
If you want to prohibit text on the entire site page for indexing, but still take into account links, you need to write the following code on the page:
If you want to close part of the text, then Google does not have such an attribute, but in Yandex it is possible. The noindex tag was introduced by the Yandex search engine, since previously it did not understand nofollow, and unnecessary links had to be somehow hidden from robots.
But in 2010, the search engine began working with the rel=”nofollow” attribute, while noindex did not disappear, but remained responsible for hiding text. Now, if you want to block text or, for example, anchor links from indexing, write the command:
For example, this was convenient when Yandex introduced a new algorithm that imposed sanctions for SEO texts. As soon as you closed the foot wraps of the text in noindex, you could get out of this filter, and not lose positions in Google, since the Google search engine does not take into account the tag .
Conclusions
Nofollow is responsible for ensuring that search engines follow these links, both on the entire page and for a specific link. Previously, noindex also performed a similar function, but only in relation to Yandex, which over time began to understand nofollow, as a result of which the value of noindex began to block content on the page from indexing.
The site owner must use the nofollow attribute correctly and understand in what cases to do this:
- When the link leads to web resources with low-quality content.
- When you post commercial content on a page.
The main task of using nofollow- help to indicate priority links for crawling, separate selling articles from informational ones, and also protect the site from spam, which, if not controlled, can lead to a decrease in ranking or, much worse, the removal of the resource from the index.
For all other situations, you can safely use ones that are open to search robots. The site’s reputation will not deteriorate at all, and will even improve if you leave links to pages that are useful to your target audience. And your documents will not lose any weight, but on the contrary, they may even gain at the expense of.
