First of all, let's start with the fact that there are several fundamentally different concepts: a tag , rel=”nofollow” attribute and meta tag . In this article, we will deal in detail with their definitions and purposes.

What is a tag

... - a tag that was proposed to be used by search engines to prohibit the indexing of the content contained in it. This tag is not included in the official specification for hypertext markup of html web pages.

Important: it is recognized only by Yandex and Rambler search engines. Google is not among the search engines that understand this html tag.

What is the rel=”nofollow” attribute

– a value that prohibits search engines from following a link that uses this attribute.

Below will be considered all examples of using the tag. and the attribute.

noindex tag and attribute

Tag for links

This tag can be used to close links from indexing. This is how it will look in the page code:

for links

link text

Tag for content

This tag can also be used to close content from indexing. There are two ways. In the page code it will look like this:

for content - option 1

< noindex >< / noindex >

for content - option 2

Text prohibited from indexing

< ! -- noindex -- >Text prohibited from indexing< ! -- / noindex -- >

But it is worth remembering that only Yandex and Rambler search engines understand this tag. Its properties do not apply to Google. Therefore, if your site has low-quality content, you can close it in this way only from Yandex and Rambler robots.

rel=”nofollow” for links

This attribute is most often used by SEOs when they want search engines to ignore the presence of an outbound link as a weight transfer factor, but the link will still be learned by the robot. Here's what it looks like in code:

link text

Usually, this is appropriate when links are added automatically, for example, in comments. If you cannot or do not want to vouch for the content of pages that are linked from your site, you should insert . This attribute is understood by both Google bots and Yandex bots, and search engines write the following in their certificates:

If you carefully read the information on the links above, you now know that nofollow link weight is not transferred. But from practice, we can safely say that the presence of such links in the link profile is a very useful and quite natural factor in the eyes of search engines. But having a lot of outbound links on your site can be a negative factor, even if they are closed through this attribute.

Do I need to use rel=”nofollow” for internal links

How to share a tag and rel=”nofollow”

Here is a sample code when optimizers use the tag and the rel=”nofollow” attribute at the same time:

"together

link text

But this method fully works only for Yandex robots. Google only understands >.

Meta tag

This meta tag is set to the section on the page that should not be indexed and it looks like this:

Meta tag

… ...

< head >

< meta name = "robots" content = "noindex, nofollow" / >

. . .

< / head >

The essence of the noindex and nofollow values ​​in the meta tag remains the same:

Noindex- prohibits indexing at the page level (all the content that is on it), but does not prohibit search robots from visiting it and following links that are used in the content.

- prohibits search robots from following links at the page level (both external and internal).

Combinations

There are several cases where this meta tag is used in practice. There are different solutions for these cases:

  1. should be used if you do not want the page to be indexed by search engines, but robots could follow links from this page to others. For example, it could be the second pagination page on a site like site.com/category/?page=2 that has links to the following products and you don't want this page to be indexed by a search engine.
  2. does the same. In this case, you will prevent the search engine from indexing the page, but robots will be able to view it and follow the links.
  3. - prohibits indexing content on the corresponding page, and also prohibits robots from following links.
  4. - allows robots to index the page and follow the links. It makes no sense to use such a meta tag, since by default, and without it, search engines are allowed to perform the same actions. But if it is installed on your site and you are not going to limit the work of the robot, there is no point in specifically removing it.
  5. - allows indexing the page, but the robot will not follow the links it contains.
  6. - does the same - allows the page to be indexed, but the robot will not follow the links it contains.

This meta tag can be used for both Google and Yandex separately

If you need to block a Google-only page from indexing, you can use . That's what Google help says.

If you close from indexing only for Yandex - . This is also written in great detail in Yandex help.

How to combine meta name="robots" with robots.txt and what is the fundamental difference

Some optimizers don't understand the difference between a meta tag and closing the corresponding page in the file robots.txt. Both methods prevent search robots from indexing the site page, but there is still a difference:

The first one allows robots to visit this page, see the meta tag and exclude it from the index or not index it.

The second one prohibits access to the page, and if suddenly it has already been indexed before, it can be in the index of search engines for a long time, even if you close it in the robots.txt file, without the right to re-index, later you can see it in the search like this:

Therefore, for non-indexed pages, you can use any of the options.

If the page has already been indexed, it is recommended to install in the section meta tag . This will remove it from the index and prevent it from being included again.

If your site is built on WordPress, the free Yoast SEO plugin will help you set up these meta tags correctly. This is how it looks like:

To help analyze the presence of all these elements (and meta tags and tags and attributes) in the code of the site pages, the RDS bar browser extension can:

By setting it up correctly, you will be able to see content wrapped in a tag (will be highlighted):

And using the meta tag :

Now you know how to use these methods to set up the correct indexing of the site, which can improve its promotion in general.

Let's start by denoting different ways using noindex and nofollow:

  • Tag and attribute
  • Meta tags and

Tag and attribute

Tag is an HTML tag that prohibits Yandex from indexing a particular area of ​​a website page. For search engine Google, this tag does not work, moreover, Google does not provide for the possibility of excluding part of the text of the page from the index at all.

Misconception #1. The main mistake of people who use this tag is to believe that if a piece of some text is placed between the opening and closing tag , then the Yandex robot will not read and analyze this text.

The only thing that this tag prohibits is the placement of content in the index database, but this content will be read and analyzed by the robot anyway.

Example: There is some text on a page on your site that uses direct matches of sentences from other third-party sources. Therefore, these suggestions reduce the uniqueness of your text, and you need 100% uniqueness. You decide to close these offers with the tag so that Yandex considers your text unique. It's a delusion.

Absolutely all the text of your page will be read and processed by the robot, and it will know that the text of your page is not unique.

The essence of the tag - “do not index”, means there is no ban on reading.

Let's say a crawler has landed on your page and started crawling your content. At some point, the robot finds an opening tag , which is a signal to the robot - do not index the text further. But to find the place in the code where the tag is closed, the robot needs to read the content that comes after the opening of this tag. Therefore, even theoretically, it is impossible to prevent robots from reading content using the tag .

What is the tag for then? ?

It is needed directly in order to prohibit the robot from issuing any information in the issuance of its search engine. These can be, for example, contacts that for some reason should not be displayed in the search results.

Misconception #2. Another misconception that is often found among site owners is the opinion that a link placed in a tag , will not be taken into account by the search robot. As I said earlier, everything inside the tag , will be read and analyzed by the Yandex robot. And links are no exception. The only difference between normally placed links and links in a tag - this is that the text (anchor) of the link will not be indexed.

To help webmasters who need the robot to still not take into account links from pages, the attribute comes, which works for both Yandex and Google. When using this attribute, the link will still be studied by the robot and a transition will be made, but without nofollow, the weight will be transferred to the addressee, and with nofollow, the weight will be burned.

Example 1:
Creation and promotion of sites

Yandex does not index the anchor, but takes into account the link to the site and transfers the weight on it

Example 2:
Creation and promotion of sites

Yandex does not index the anchor and does not transfer weight by link to the site

There are two ways to write a tag in code:

1.

2. Text prohibited from indexing

The second option is more correct. Since the tag is not included in the official specification of the HTML markup language, then its presence in the code may cause confusion among other search engines, which will consider its presence as an error. To make the page code valid, it is recommended to use a commented spelling for all search robots. Yandex recognizes such a spelling, and other search robots will not pay attention to its presence.

Meta tags and

The use of the noindex meta tag in the page code prevents Yandex (Google, again, not participating in this case) from indexing all the text content of the page, while links will be analyzed in full. 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 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 meta tag with a nofollow value, however, they can be indexed if they are referenced without nofollow in other sources”

Summing up

Tag we use it only to prohibit Yandex robots from issuing information in the search results.

If we want the weight of the link not to be passed to the addressee, 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 refers. The method works for both Yandex and Google.

Correct use of tag and attribute noindex, nofollow The very first step in competent SEO optimization. After all noindex and nofollow play a huge role in transferring weight from one site to another.

noindex tag (noindex)

As you might guess, the noindex tag is used to prevent indexing of some part of the html code ( pictures and links cannot be closed from indexing this tag, but only text). If you still close the anchor with a link with this tag, then only the anchor will not be indexed, and the link will still get into the index. However, the tag is not valid, so some html editors refuse to accept it (in particular, visual editor in wordpress removes noindex). But the tag can be given validity:

in this form, the tag is absolutely valid - so you can write it in the wordpress editor without fear that the tag will disappear. Noindex is perceived exclusively by the Yandex search engine, and Google does not react to it in any way.

Do not confuse the usual tag with the noindex meta tag at the top of the page, their goals are different. A simple tag prohibits indexing only that part of the page code that is between the opening < noindex> and closing tags. Example:

As for the meta tag, it prohibits indexing the entire page (the prohibition is written in the file) - Yandex does not index such a page at all.

By the way, he is wrong when he advises closing all links with nofollow noindex tags, but more on that below.

The tag works flawlessly: all text information inside it does not fall into the Yandex index. However, some optimizers claim that sometimes the text inside the noindex is indexed - alas, this really happens. The fact is that Yandex still initially indexes the entire html code, even the one inside the tag, but then filters it. Therefore, at first, the text inside the noindex can indeed be indexed, but soon the tag works and “everything superfluous” flies out of the index.

By the way, nesting noindex tags is completely optional - the tag will work even if the nesting is incorrect (this is written in the Yandex help):

Attention!!!Using the opening tag ( ) , do not forget to put closing - ( ) , otherwise all text after will not be indexed.

When to use noindex and when not

This tag should be used in cases where we want to hide an unnecessary part of the html code of the page from Yandex, so that “dirt” does not get into the index of the robot of this search engine. Based on this, we can say that noindex costs use to:

  • hide the codes of various counters (liveinternet, rambler100, TIC and PR counters, etc.);
  • hide a bad word or obscene speech, although it is better not to use “such” at all;
  • hide repetitive or non-unique content (quote, copy-paste, etc.);
  • close from indexing too often or constantly changing content - indexing such information is meaningless;
  • prevent Yandex from seeing mailing list forms, mail and Rss subscriptions, etc.;
  • do not index unnecessary information in sidebars (banner, extra textual information).

But the noindex tag is not needed in some cases.

  • No need to close ads from Yandex.Direct, Google.Adsense, Begun from indexing.
  • You should not put external or internal links inside the tag - the tag does not work on them anyway. Look at the links from my site, none of them are enclosed in a noindex tag - this is pointless!
  • There is no need to place links in blog comments in the noindex tag - again, it does not work!

nofollow tag

The nofollow attribute is designed to block links from indexing for both Google and Yandex. It is used in order not to transfer weight from the referring site to the referring one. The fact that Yandex does not know about nofollow is a myth, see for yourself - link . By the way, the nofollow tag does not save weight on the page - if some link is "nofollow", then the weight does not flow over it, but burns down, or, if there are other links on the page that are not closed by this tag, it is redistributed between them. By the way, it follows from here that if you have at least one active external hyperlink on the page, then the weight from the page goes away - therefore don't close everything external links nofollow tag. You still won’t save the weight (it will burn out if all external links are closed by nofollow).

The fundamental difference between noindex nofollow: noindex - tag that closes the text from indexing, nofollow - tag attribute , which prohibits passing weight by reference. An example of using nofollow:

< a href= "http://example.ru" rel= "nofollow" >anchor

Using nofollow

The nofollow attribute should be used if there is no need to transfer weight from the referring site to the web resource to which the link leads. Therefore, we use the tag to:

  • do not pass weight on links leading to a "bad" site from the point of view of search engines or just some "left" site that does not mean anything to you;
  • close a link to a non-thematic site from transferring weight - such a link is undesirable;
  • redistribute weight between links on the page (useful if you are either selling links from the site through exchanges);
  • reduce the number of links outgoing from the page - this is done if there are too many external or internal links on the page;
  • do not give weight to a link leading to a mega-popular resource (Yandex, Google, subscrube and all sites whose birds are very large);
  • close links in comments - you don’t need to pass weight on them (but only if your blog is not ).

Sharing the noindex nofollow tag and attribute

Both tags and noindex, and nofollow They feel great when they are placed next to each other. An example of their joint use:

< noindex>< a href= "http://example.ru" rel= "nofollow" >anchor

But as mentioned above, it is not necessary to close links with the noindex tag, this is pointless. This way you can prevent indexing of the anchor, but not the link itself. The link itself needs a nofollow tag. But despite this, many optimizers (mostly beginners), insuring themselves, close the link with both tags - nofollow noindex. They just do extra work - there is no sense from it, the tasks of these tags are different. Look through any of my articles (for example, this one -), not a single link there is closed with the noindex tag. If you don't trust me, check out the expert optimizer's blog. And the Start Up school, which teaches its students to close all links with a noindex, is mistaken.

For dessert: seomania and seomarasm of modern optimizers

Exclusively for those who have read this far, I share exclusive information, which, however, is known to experienced optimizers, they don’t hide it, but they don’t really advertise it.

Beginner optimizers are engaged in real insanity: they hide all external links from the site inside the tag and attribute noindex, nofollow. Or even worse: there is not a single external link on the page, fearing to lose the “precious” TIC. The question is, why do this, why be so afraid of losing a little weight from the page? What, from this action, the TCI site or PR page will fall heavily? Or will it be impossible to bring the page to the top for mid-range or low-frequency queries? Nonsense. No need to be greedy: 1-2 external links from the page will only improve the credibility of it from the search engines, and now I will prove it to you.

Any text written by someone must contain references to the sources that were used in its writing, otherwise there will be doubts about the reliability of the material presented. Judge for yourself, would you trust a book that had 1-2 sources in the list of references? Think about it, even a small brochure has 10-20 materials in its sources.

How do you even know if you can trust the information in an article? If the thoughts in the text are supported by authoritative opinion, then you can trust. Remember Wikipedia, any article in it contains a sea of ​​links, and if there are not enough of them, then the moderators delete the material. It is the same with any article on your site: if you do not have enough links to third-party AUTHORITIVE resources, then the price of such material is zero! First of all, you must take care of the readers, so follow these two rules:

  • Links are the basis of the Internet, so by recommending (using links) a good site/article/information to your visitors, you thereby make your site more useful, because it is from you that the reader learned about another good site. Takeaway: Don't be afraid to add links that your readers will actually find useful.
  • a link on the site cannot appear by itself, therefore, the link is put by the site owner, and if he refers to a “bad”, non-authoritative resource banned by Yandex, then for the ps in the future the site of such a would-be webmaster will become non-authoritative. Conclusion: link to AUTHORITIVE, useful resources.

Search engines will always help you get to the top site that is made for people, so link to good resources, do not be afraid - 1-2 useful links will not only not interfere, but also strengthen the position of the site. And don't forget, you shouldn't nofollow all external links, don't be afraid to share weight, it will leave the page anyway. The opinion “not to me, not to others” is fundamentally wrong, now you share an open link, and then someone will put a link to you for free.

And one more thing: actively redistribute weight between links by closing some nofollow (but not noindex - again I remind you, this is pointless). Leave the necessary external links open, and close the unnecessary ones so that only the first one gets the weight.

SEO optimization in the case of noindex nofollow should be correct. I hope from my article it became clear how to use it correctly and incorrectly. noindex and nofollow.

nofollow- this is an attribute that is prescribed for a specific link or all links on a page in robots in order to prevent search robots from following them.

Noindex- This is an attribute that closes the text on the page.

That is, noindex is responsible for the content in the document and the prohibition of its indexing, while nofollow is for the link.

Application rules and why nofollow is needed?

To understand in what cases this attribute can be useful at all, consider how the most popular search engines treat it.

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 bots about the lack of trust in relation to the site to which the link leads.

Consider more specific example when the link requires a disallow attribute:

Questionable material. If you don't like the content of a page that a visitor links to in a comment and you don't want to sacrifice your site's reputation, add to the link tags. Spammers, having noticed a trend on your resource when a blocking attribute is added to unverified links, will soon stop trying to harm the site. If you see that the user leaves a link to high-quality material, nofollow can be removed manually or automatically.

How to spell nofollow?

Now nofollow allows you to manage each link separately, but once this value could only be used in the meta tag, which closed 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

These meta tags have remained to this day. If you want to close all links contained on a certain page from indexing, then you need to write the following code on this page:

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 in no case prescribe these two tags for them:

Above, we looked at options for how to prevent search robots from clicking on all links on pages. But you can also assign a ban on the transition to a specific link.

To prevent the robot from following the link for indexing, you need to add the rel=”nofollow” attribute to it, in the code it looks like this:

hyperlink anchor

Does link weight leak with nofollow?

Although Google in its statements positions the use of the nofollow attribute as following a link. And this was confirmed by the appeal of the former head of the company to combat search spam, Matt Cutts. He stated that "Google may consider links from social networks, even despite nofollow".

But with Yandex, the question 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, earlier it was possible to check this if you apply 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 a ban, especially if the site is authoritative.

Should I nofollow internal links?

In the past, seo optimizers have been heavily abused by manipulating the transmitted weight within the site. Therefore, the Google search engine stated that all internal links marked will give weight to https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/ .

The former head of search at Google speaks about this in the video. The video is in English, so turn on Russian subtitles.

The noindex attribute: what is it and how is it different from nofollow?

Many novice webmasters are scratching their heads, not understanding how noindex differs from nofollow. It's simple:

  • nofollow - applies to links
  • noindex - applied to text

If you want to prohibit the text on the entire page of the site for indexing, but at the same time 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 it is possible in Yandex. The noindex tag was introduced by the Yandex search engine, since it did not understand nofollow before, and unnecessary links had to be somehow closed from robots.

But in 2010, the search engine began to work with the rel=”nofollow” attribute, while noindex did not disappear, but remained responsible for hiding the text. Now, if you want to close the text from indexing or, for example, anchor links, write the command:

For example, it was convenient when Yandex introduced a new algorithm that imposed sanctions for seo texts. It was worth closing the footcloths of the text in noindex, and it was possible to 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 the search engines following 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 eventually began to understand nofollow, as a result of which the noindex value began to block content on the page from indexing.

The site owner must correctly use the nofollow attribute and understand in which cases it should be done:

  1. When the link leads to web resources with low-quality content.
  2. When you place commercial content on a page.

The main task of using nofollow- help to specify the priority links for crawling, separate selling articles from informational ones, as well as protect the site from spam, which, if not controlled, can lead to a decrease in ranking or, much worse, a departure of the resource from the index.

For all other situations, you can safely use, open to search robots. The reputation of the site will not deteriorate at all, but will even improve if you leave links to pages that are useful for your target audience. And your documents will not lose any weight, but on the contrary, they can even gain at the expense of

Noindex - index tag for search engines (Yandex and Rambler), warning that part of the web page does not need to be indexed.

More videos on our channel - learn internet marketing with SEMANTICA

What is the difference between noindex and nofollow

The first significant difference between them is that the first was visible earlier for Google, and the second - only for Yandex and Rambler. Currently, Yandex has also learned to recognize Nofollow, which only works for links, and Noindex for any site code.

The use of Nofollow does not make the link invisible, but only indicates that you do not need to follow it and index the document to which it leads. The search robot indexes this hyperlink, but the weight from the site is not transferred if it leads to someone else's resource. This attribute works for all search engines.

As for the Noindex tag, only Yandex works with it. Google will just ignore it. You need to use it in cases where you want to close some part of the page - text, image or link - from indexing. The search engine recognizes the content, but subsequently throws it out of the index. This measure is set for a complete analysis of the page and the procedure for imposing possible sanctions for violations.

What is Noindex for?

  • Unnecessary / non-unique information is closed, which improves the relevance of the page, because the density of key phrases, relevance to the topic, and uniqueness increase.
  • Cross-cutting blocks and hyperlinks are hidden, the presence of which can lead to pessimization.
  • Hiding personal and proprietary information if you do not want it to be easily found through the search.

What is Nofollow for?

  • Closing extra web links.
  • Keeping page weight unchanged.
  • Distribution of a certain weight across links.

How to use noindex and nofollow

The Noindex tag for any content is applied like this:

text to hide , and further text.

When working with Noindex, there is a possibility that the validity of the code will decrease, since only the Russian search engine knows this tag. Therefore, the following spelling is recommended:

.

All text to be hidden.

At the same time, other search engines will simply skip it, and the validity of the code will remain unchanged.

Nofollow attribute for links applied

In this case, the anchor gets into the index, but the search engine does not follow the web link, the weight on the page remains.

If there are too many nofollows on the page, then this can negatively affect the loyalty of search engines.

Sharing

In order to close both the text part and the hyperlink, you should adhere to the following spelling:

All text to be hidden anchor, and more text

Options for the correct use of Noindex and Nofollow to prevent indexing of the document as a whole

The tag and attribute go hand in hand all the time and are often used together. They can be used in the document's meta name=robots to indicate guidelines for indexing and following web links. An indication of the prohibition of indexing is necessary if duplicate pages are found, or confidential or outdated information has appeared on the network, and pages cannot be removed in any other way.

If you want to close the entire page from indexing and prohibit taking into account the links located on it, you must specify the following in the page metadata:

Noindex creates a command for Yandex not to index the content on the page, but the robot follows its web links. Therefore, an additional Nofollow indicates not to walk on them. This instruction is accepted by both Yandex and Google.

As for deleting a document from the Google index, the search engine provides an alternative method: writing X-Robots-Tag: noindex, nofollow. This indication is fixed in http headers that are not visible in the page code.

We talk about the difference between Nofollow and Noindex, how to use them correctly for links and hiding content on the site.

Always make sure that the tags and attributes discussed in the article are present in right places to get exactly the result you expect.