noindex set, but page is in index

name="robots" content="noindex" doesn't work?

[cangoou]

I have a login-page of a new domain, which I declared from the start as
<meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow, noodp">

Nevertheless, the page is in the index (and ranking, which is even more weired).

The page is a 301-redirect (from /somepage.htm to /login?url=somepage.htm) which happens if you try to access somepage.htm and you are not logged in (like Google is I suppose ;-)).

- Why is the page indexed?
- How can I get the page out of the index?

[tedster]

You can request the removal of a url by using a Webmaster Tools account to verify that you are responsible for the site and then using the url removal request in your account.

Because of backlinks, even "noindex" urls can show up in the search results. But in those cases, Google creates the displayed title and snippet from information that is not on the page itself. So the exact content of the url is not indexed - a strange approach to the robots noindex meta tag.

At any rate, the url removal request in GWT works.

[cangoou]

Thanks for your reply. The problem is that it's a cms-system I use for myself and customers, so I would have to do the removal for every domain I use the system on. I think I will try sending a 404 on that page for googlebot or use robots.txt.

[Miamacs]

Hold on, which page has the NOINDEX and which is the one indexed? You say it's a redirect, but is it *the* redirect or the *target* of the redirect?

In either case, I'd check the cache, and searches with the inurl: operator to make sure which URL is the one indexed. If that redirect isn't as 301 as it should be ( and more like a 302 ) Google is pretty much behaving as it should be.

[cangoou]

*The* redirecting-page uses a 301 - so there is no html-code allowed on it.

The *target* page is the one which is in the google-index and which has the noindex set. I looked at the google-cache: The *target* page has the noindex set as well there.

[g1smd]

Google has had this glitch before: showing URLs in the SERPs that have a noindex meta tag within the page.

That was a bug.

At that time, it only affected results from the Supplemental Index. Maybe it is a repeat of that?

It was more than a year ago.

URLs with the meta noindex tag should not appear in the index at all.

It is URLs that are disallowed by robots.txt that can appear as URL-only entries in the SERPs.

I have seen the "title building" effect in Yahoo SERPs, but I don't recall seeing it in Google.