META-noindexed my Home Page by a mistake

Critical or harmless?

[OutdoorMan]

Hi.

Some days ago I made some changes in my Home Page's layout. During the development of the new page, before altering my Home Page, I runned a test page (/test.asp) which was uploaded to the server.

To prevent the test page from beeing indexed by SEs, I made sure that a <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> was in place.

Today, by a coincidence, I sadly discovered that when I uploaded the test page, as my new Home Page, I had forgotten all about the META-noindex :o

I can't remember exactly when the new Home Page was uploaded, but I estimate that it was between tuesday (last week) and saturday (this weekend). I have just removed the META-noindex.

Is this a critical situation?

[tedster]

Predictions in a specific case can be risky, but my guess would be either 1) no problem (most likely) or 2) only a short term problem of a week or so.

You might gain some piece of mind by watching the cache date for your home page.

[walkman]

harmless...unless a competitor submits a "remove request" while you still have that.

Otherwise the page should be back within a week or so, like nothing happened.

[OutdoorMan]

Thanks! Good to know.

My Home Page is still in the index (and has been all the time), only with the cache and date of the recent version.

I was just worried that my HP would have been removed from the SERPs.

walkman > How is it possible for a competitor to submit a "remove request" on my behalf? Isn't it only possible for a webmaster that can confirm ownership of a particular website to do so?

[OutdoorMan]

Feedback: My Home Page was succesfully indexed on the december 23rd :)

Thanks for your comments.

[Pirates]

OutdoorMan thankyou. Sometimes posts like this get ignored for there true value and contribution.

This post proved certain things about how meta tags are handled and there weight for me.

So a big thanks for posting this OutdoorMan and I am very pleased you had a good outcome.

[OutdoorMan]

Pirates > Glad to read that you've found my feedback usefull. I did think that some feedback on the outcome of this issue could be usefull to others who might are, or one day perhaps will be, in the same situation.

Some extended feedback/information on the outcome:

My Home Page was re-indexed again on december 29th -- and my new Home Page has advanced in SERPs position from #19 to #9 for my primary keyword.

It sure looks like this issue didn't harmed my Home Page rankings at all :)