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        4. NoIndex or Rel=Canonical Pagination

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        NoIndex or Rel=Canonical Pagination

        On-Page Optimization
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        • chuck-layton
          chuck-layton last edited by

          Hello,

          I had a question about noindex and Rel=Canonical on category page pagination. On my site, the category page the meta="robots" has "Index,Follow" tags and the rel="canonical" is the main category page, but when a user sorts the page the meta="robots" changes to "NoIndex, Follow."

          My question is should the sorted page be name="robots" content="INDEX,FOLLOW" /> since the  rel="canonical" is pointing to the main page?? Or does it matter that it is NoIndex??

          Any thoughts on this topic would be awesome. Thanks.

          Main Category Page
          https://www.site.com/category/
          name="robots" content="INDEX,FOLLOW" />
          rel="canonical" href="https://www.site.com/category/"/>

          Name Sorted Page
          https://www.site.com/category/?dir=asc&order=name
          name="robots" content="NOINDEX, FOLLOW" />
          rel="canonical" href="https://www.site.com/category/">

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Martijn_Scheijbeler
            Martijn_Scheijbeler last edited by

            Hi Chuck,

            I would also look into categorizing your URL parameters in this case: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6080550?hl=en as this is inovlving both sorting and categorizing the data on the page it's a good solution to tell Google more about the intent that you have on this page.

            Martijn.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • davebuts
              davebuts last edited by

              Hi Chuck,

              It's strange to me that the "NOINDEX, FOLLOW" would be automatically added to these pages.

              The canonical tag is correct so I wouldn't use "noindex" here - it's redundant.

              John Mueller from Google recently explained why canonical and "noindex" shouldn't be used together: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-noindex-rel-canonical-confusion-26079.html

              Cheers,

              David

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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