Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Two META Robots tags on a page - which will win?
- 
					
					
					
					
 Hi, Does anybody know which meta-robots tag will "win" if there is more than one on a page? The situation: 
 our CMS is not very flexible and so we have segments of META-Tags on the page that originate from templates.
 Now any author can add any meta-tag from within his article-editor.
 The logic delivering the pages does not care if there might be more than one meta-robots tag present (one from template, one from within the article).Now we could end up with something like this: Which one will be regarded by google & co? 
 First?
 Last?
 None?Thanks a lot, 
 Jan
- 
					
					
					
					
 I can confirm chris is correct, our crappy CMS does the same thing (for certain pages), and the pages are not indexed 
- 
					
					
					
					
 Why not try to avoid the problem altogheter? I assume the below line is site-wide: If you remove the index, follow meta tag, your pages will still be indexed and followed. Then allow your authors to decide on a post-by-post basis if they want to noindex or nofollow the page. 
- 
					
					
					
					
 The two get aggregated or the most restrictive gets used so in this case, you'd get http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/03/using-robots-meta-tag.html 
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
- 
		
		Moz ToolsChat with the community about the Moz tools. 
- 
		
		SEO TacticsDiscuss the SEO process with fellow marketers 
- 
		
		CommunityDiscuss industry events, jobs, and news! 
- 
		
		Digital MarketingChat about tactics outside of SEO 
- 
		
		Research & TrendsDive into research and trends in the search industry. 
- 
		
		SupportConnect on product support and feature requests. 
Related Questions
- 
		
		
		
		
		
		I want to move some pages of my website to a folder and nav menu in those pages should only show inner page links, will it hurt SEO?
 Hi, My website has a few SaaS products, to make my website simple i want to move my website some pages to its specific folder structure , so eg website.com/product1/features Technical SEO | | webbeemoz
 website.com/product1/pricing
 website.com/product1/information and same for product2 and so on, the website.com/product1/.. menu will only show the links of product1 and only one link to homepage (possibly in footer). Please share your opinion will it be a good idea, from UI perspective it will be simple , but i am not sure about SEO perspective, please help thanks1
- 
		
		
		
		
		
		Indexed pages
 Just started a site audit and trying to determine the number of pages on a client site and whether there are more pages being indexed than actually exist. I've used four tools and got four very different answers... Google Search Console: 237 indexed pages Google search using site command: 468 results MOZ site crawl: 1013 unique URLs Screaming Frog: 183 page titles, 187 URIs (note this is a free licence, but should cut off at 500) Can anyone shed any light on why they differ so much? And where lies the truth? Technical SEO | | muzzmoz1
- 
		
		
		
		
		
		Blog Page Titles - Page 1, Page 2 etc.
 Hi All, I have a couple of crawl errors coming up in MOZ that I am trying to fix. They are duplicate page title issues with my blog area. For example we have a URL of www.ourwebsite.com/blog/page/1 and as we have quite a few blog posts they get put onto another page, example www.ourwebsite.com/blog/page/2 both of these urls have the same heading, title, meta description etc. I was just wondering if this was an actual SEO problem or not and if there is a way to fix it. I am using Wordpress for reference but I can't see anywhere to access the settings of these pages. Thanks Technical SEO | | O2C0
- 
		
		
		
		
		
		Product Pages Outranking Category Pages
 Hi, We are noticing an issue where some product pages are outranking our relevant category pages for certain keywords. For a made up example, a "heavy duty widgets" product page might rank for the keyword phrase Heavy Duty Widgets, instead of our Heavy Duty Widgets category page appearing in the SERPs. We've noticed this happening primarily in cases where the name of the product page contains an at least partial match for the desired keyword phrase we want the category page to rank for. However, we've also found isolated cases where the specified keyword points to a completely irrelevent pages instead of the relevant category page. Has anyone encountered a similar issue before, or have any ideas as to what may cause this to happen? Let me know if more clarification of the question is needed. Thanks! Technical SEO | | ShawnHerrick0
- 
		
		
		
		
		
		Splitting Page Authority with two URLs for the same page.
 Hello guys, My website is currently holding two different URLs for the same page and I am under the impression such set up is dividing my Page Authority and Link Juice. We currently have the following page with both URLs below: www.wbresearch.com/soldiertechnologyusa/home.aspx Technical SEO | | JoaoPdaCosta-WBR
 www.wbresearch.com/soldiertechnologyusa/ Analysing the page authority and backlinks I identified that we are splitting the amount of backlinks (links from sites, social media and therefore authority). "/home.aspx"
 PA: 67
 Linking Root Domains: 52
 Total Links: 272 "/"
 PA: 64
 Linking Root Domains: 29
 Total Links: 128 I am under the impression that if the URLs were the same we would maximise our backlinks and therefore page authority. My Question: How can I fix this? Should I have a 301 redirect from the page "/" to the "/home.aspx" therefore passing the authority and link juice of “/” directly to “/homes.aspx”? Trying to gather thoughts and ideas on this, suggestions are much appreciated? Thanks!0
- 
		
		
		
		
		
		Handling 301s: Multiple pages to a single page (consolidation)
 Been scouring the interwebs and haven't found much information on redirecting two serparate pages to a single new page. Here is what it boils down to: Let's say a website has two pages, both with good page authority of products that are becoming fazed out. The products, Widget A and Widget B, are still popular search terms, but they are being combined into ONE product, Widget C. While Widget A and Widget B STILL have plenty to do with Widget C, Widget C is now the new page, the main focus page, and the page you want everyone to see and Google to recognize. Now, do I 301 Widget A and Widget B pages to Widget C, ALTHOUGH Widgets A and B previously had nothing to do with one another? (Remember, we want to try and keep some of that authority the two page have had.) OR do we keep Widget A and Widget B pages "alive", take them off the main navigation, and then put a "disclaimer" on the pages announcing they are now part of Widget C and link to Widget C? OR Should Widgets A and B page be canonicalized to Widget C? Again, keep in mind, widgets A and B previously were not similar, but NOW they are and result in Widget C. (If you are confused, we can provide a REAL work example of what we are talkinga about, but decided to not be specific to our industry for this.) Appreciate any and all thoughts on this. Technical SEO | | JU19850
- 
		
		
		
		
		
		Adding 'NoIndex Meta' to Prestashop Module & Search pages.
 Hi Looking for a fix for the PrestaShop platform Look for the definitive answer on how to best stop the indexing of PrestaShop modules such as "send to a friend", "Best Sellers" and site search pages. We want to be able to add a meta noindex ()to pages ending in: /search?tag=ball&p=15 or /modules/sendtoafriend/sendtoafriend-form.php We already have in the robot text: Disallow: /search.php Technical SEO | | reallyitsme
 Disallow: /modules/ (Google seems to ignore these) But as a further tool we would like to incude the noindex to all these pages too to stop duplicated pages. I assume this needs to be in either the head.tpl or the .php file of each PrestaShop module.? Or is there a general site wide code fix to put in the metadata to apply' Noindex Meta' to certain files. Current meta code here: Please reply with where to add code and what the code should be. Thanks in advance.0
- 
		
		
		
		
		
		Robots.txt File Redirects to Home Page
 I've been doing some site analysis for a new SEO client and it has been brought to my attention that their robots.txt file redirects to their homepage. I was wondering: Is there a benfit to setup your robots.txt file to do this? Will this effect how their site will get indexed? Thanks for your response! Kyle Site URL: http://www.radisphere.net/ Technical SEO | | kchandler0
 
			
		 
			
		 
			
		 
					
				 
					
				 
					
				 
					
				 
					
				 
					
				