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

  • #8690
    Avatar photo[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!

    #8695
    Avatar photoBob

    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.

    #8696
    Avatar photo[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. 😉

    #8721
    Avatar photo[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!!