noindex,follow meta tags: what gets passed?

[internetheaven]

Is it just the case that noindex,follow means that Googlebot will simply follow the links on the page?

The links show up in WMT but do the linked to pages benefit from those links seo-wise e.g.

1. Anchor Text
2. Pagerank
3. Trustrank

To clarify, robots.txt exclusion stops the bot seeing the page - noindex stops that page being part of the index so factors 1-3 should be at least "seen" by the bot on a noindex page. But which are actually passed?

Just received some links from someone who has this tag on a lot of pages (dupe content issues on his blog) and wondered if I should expect any ranking increase!

[Robert Charlton]

Assuming they're not also excluded by robots.txt... pages with noindex,follow robots meta tags can accumulate PageRank and can pass it on to other pages.

Just received some links from someone who has this tag on a lot of pages (dupe content issues on his blog) and wondered if I should expect any ranking increase!

It's hard to say in the abstract how multiple links from a blog would boost your rankings... regardless of the noindex status of those pages. I wouldn't count on multiple links from a site, particularly if they're, say, run of site links, counting for much more than a single link from the site.

[natim]

This isn't exactly on topic but hopefully someone has some experience to share: we have migrated some sites from html designs over to really nice well optimized WP Themes with great success. Designers used a no index, no follow setting in WP while converting from html and testing on test server so we didn't get both indexed while underway. They forgot to turn off that setting when we took new WP design live. Home page totally disappeared from index with last cache date of jan 30, the tags were in play for several weeks and we kept updating new fresh content but spiders wouldn't go near it due to those tags. We found problem fri mar 5 but so far haven't been able to get gbot back to spider home page, any experience or ideas appreciated.

[TheMadScientist]

I wouldn't stress on it. In my experience most of the time the pages will be re-indexed within 2 to 3 of weeks of removal of the noindex. IMO It may take a bit longer in your case since they were also nofollowed, but I'd say to give it a bit of time and keep doing what you do... It's always been a couple weeks for me before things get sorted out. Something I've done to 'encourage' the bots to recheck is re-submitting key index pages so I know they will be requested on the next time around rather than waiting for the main page to get spidered, having the tag removal noticed, then the next level of pages being spidered and noticed the next time around. I usually pick 3 or 4 'key' pages leading to the deeper levels and leave it there.

[internetheaven]

This isn't exactly on topic

You're right ... a new thread would be better.

[internetheaven]

pages with noindex,follow robots meta tags can accumulate PageRank and can pass it on to other pages.

But only the Pagerank then? i.e. increasing the green bar but with no increase to the backlink profile or the inbound anchor text for that page/site?

[FranticFish]

I've just tested this and the anchor text from a page that is noindex,follow is credited. Just to clarify:

Page A (noindex,follow) links with unique phrase to Page B
Page B is found when searching for that unique phrase.

[internetheaven]

I've just tested this and the anchor text from a page that is noindex,follow is credited.

Thanks for sharing. The unique phrase is important for checking certainly. We used a new phrasing (specific location) with these links and I'll post if we see the same results you have.