Google’s John Mueller answered a query on Reddit a couple of generally used robots meta tag and what would occur if it was lacking. Mueller’s reply, whereas it is sensible and is documented, should still come as a shock to many publishers and SEOs.
Robots Meta Tag
The HTML meta component communicates metadata. Metadata is machine readable data {that a} crawler like Googlebot can learn.
There are various sorts of meta components just like the meta description component however the Robots Meta Factor is totally different in that it could actually management the search engine crawlers.
The knowledge communicated by the robots meta tag is known as a directive, which implies that robotic crawlers are obligated to obey the directions within the robots meta tag.
There are various instructions to go alongside via the robots meta however the next meta tag is one that’s related to the query John Mueller answered.
The noindex, no observe meta tag:
<meta identify="robots" content material="noindex, nofollow">
The above meta tag tells the search engine crawlers to not index the content material on the webpage and to not observe any hyperlinks.
One of the widespread meta tags is that this one, which instructions search engines like google and yahoo to index the content material and observe all of the hyperlinks:
<meta identify="robots" content material="index, observe">
Whereas the above meta tag is widespread, there’s a important quantity of bewilderment about it. There’s a line of reasoning that as a result of Google helps nofollow then it should suggest that Google helps the observe directive.
I discovered quite a lot of authoritative web sites that say that Google makes use of the meta robots index, observe meta tag.
However that’s not really how Google makes use of these directives, as John Mueller makes clear in his reply.
See additionally: Google Solutions If Meta Robots Tags Have an effect on Search Rankings
What’s The Impact Of Leaving Out The Meta Robots Index Tag?
The individual on Reddit requested the next query:
“I’m a bit confused with an internet site I’m engaged on.
So, that is what the meta snippets on a lot of the web sites I work on appear like:
<meta identify=’robots’ content material=’index, observe ….
However, on the web site at hand, it’s lacking the ‘index’ tag.
My query is: What’s the impact of the positioning lacking the ‘index’ tag.”
John Mueller answered:
“The “index” robots meta tag has no operate (a minimum of in Google) – it’s utterly ignored. Additionally “observe”.
Google has https://builders.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/special-tags & https://builders.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/robots-meta-tag to doc the meta tags which have capabilities. You should utilize anything, it’ll be ignored. <meta identify=”robots” content material=”topranking bestcheese”> is an choice, if you wish to throw individuals off.”
Why Google Ignores Robots Index & Comply with
The straightforward motive why Google ignores the robots index and observe meta tag is as a result of indexing and observe are the defaults.
Indexing and following hyperlinks is what search engine robots do, they don’t need to be instructed to index content material and observe hyperlinks as a result of that’s their function.
Google’s documentation on robots tags advises:
“The default values are index, observe and don’t have to be specified.”
The complete record of legitimate directives for Google is right here.
If the robots meta you wish to use isn’t’ listed there then Googlebot goes to disregard it.
Associated: How To Management Googlebot’s Interplay With Your Web site
Is Index, Comply with Utterly Ineffective?
It’s true, documented and official that in the case of Googlebot, <meta identify=”robots” content material=”index, observe”> is a waste of HTML house and is ignored by Googlebot.
Bing treats index, observe in an identical approach however with a slight distinction, as described within the official Bing documentation for meta tags.
That is what Bing’s documentation says in regards to the index directive:
“By default we assume “index”, but when wanted you should utilize <meta identify=”robots” content material=”index”> to explicitly state that we could index the web page.”
And that is what it says in regards to the observe directive:
“By default we assume “observe”, however you possibly can explicitly state “observe” if that’s the case desired.”
In my 20+ years of working in search engine optimization creating web sites, optimizing them and rating them, I’ve all the time thought of it a great coverage to provide the bots what they count on and take a look at to not give them something that’s sudden. So if a meta description shouldn’t be obligatory then my impulse can be to depart it out as a result of the entire level of optimizing is to make it as straightforward as potential for the major search engines to index and perceive the content material, which implies to eliminate something which may work in opposition to that objective.
On this case, it’s extremely seemingly it’s not going to have an impact in some way.
However… There’s one other approach that observe and index journey individuals up.
Some publishers use this robots meta tag:
<meta identify="robots" content material="noindex, observe">
Some websites advise that if the web page isn’t listed, the usage of the “observe” directive compels the search engine to observe the hyperlinks.
However that’s not true if there’s a “noindex” directive for the easy causes that Google can not observe a hyperlink on a web page that it isn’t listed. If it’s not within the index then the hyperlinks on these pages usually are not within the index.
Learn: How To Get Google To Index Your Web site (Shortly)
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