Glossary
What is noindex?
Noindex is an instruction that tells search engines not to show a page in their results. It is set in a meta tag or in an HTTP header.
Why it matters
Noindex is useful for pages that visitors need and searchers do not, such as internal search results or thank-you pages. It is also one of the most damaging mistakes in SEO when it is left on by accident.
A staging site is usually set to noindex. If the setting is carried over at launch, the whole site drops out of search results.
How we handle it
We check for noindex on every template before and after a release. In one recovery project, a noindex tag had stayed on the live site for over two weeks after a migration.
Related service: Technical SEO services
Related terms
Keep reading
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Indexation
Indexation is the step in which a search engine stores a page in its database, called the index.
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Canonical tag
A canonical tag is a line in the HTML of a page that tells search engines which URL is the main version when several URLs show the same or very similar content.
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Crawl budget
Crawl budget is the amount of crawling a search engine is willing to spend on a website in a given period.
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