Google nerd-fighting over NOINDEX tag
Matt Cutts says an internal discussion over how to treat the NOINDEX tag has the company debating the best way to handle pages using it.
Webmasters who want to control their content and its entry into search indexes sometimes turn to the NOINDEX meta tag to help. Here’s the problem: it isn’t being handled consistently at the major search engines, according to Cutts. Even Google isn’t sure what to do with pages tagged as NOINDEX.
“The question is whether Google should completely drop a NOINDEX’ed page from our search results vs. show a reference to the page, or something in between?” Cutts said in his post. Options fall into one of three possibilities: drop a NOINDEX page from the index, show links/references to those pages, or find some other middle ground.
Naturally the topic has generated some webmaster debate. One commenter at Cutts’ post said it’s “disrespectful” to index something marked as NOINDEX. Most of the follow-up comments expressed similar sentiments.
You can express yours in the comment section below, too.
The NOINDEX tag was a great idea because some pages are meant for internal use only. Or maybe they are being worked on before wanting to post them publicly, if at all. Sometimes page ideas turn out to be better not used. Or maybe they are used for notes and reference for a virtual team who work on the site. Now some people may say that’s not an appropriate use for web pages but why not? The web makes it easy for a purpose like this and then it’s all in one place. I could go on but you get the point which, to be clear, is that there could be many reasons for NOINDEX pages. So let’s keep them exactly what the word says “do not index” the pages at all.