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why the meta robots setting of these pages are noindex by default?

November 11, 2022 at 6:05 pm #8690

[anonymous]

Hi,

I can understand the default meta robots setting of noindex for error page and search page, but why for tags list page, tag page and author page? I mean are there any points I missed? It looks like Google PageSpeed Insights is not quite happy with it…

Thanks!

November 12, 2022 at 8:53 am #8695

Bob

The tag pages display the same, thin content (not very comprehensive or in-depth) – a list of the posts. This is why they are noindexed by default.

November 12, 2022 at 10:42 am #8696

[anonymous]

Thank you Bob for the reply. I also did some research after posted the question and yes it’s exactly like you said, which is the point I overlooked before. 😉

November 16, 2022 at 4:14 am #8721

[anonymous]

There is also the SEO cannibalism thing where Google will rank the tag pages higher than the content page. On one side, tag pages are good for SEO while on the other hand they can drop your content in the SERPs while the tag page remain high. Which do you prefer your users to find? People will often allow tag pages in certain very narrow circumstances. I do not recommend letting Google index your tag pages.

Cheers!!