Combining noindex/follow with prev / next on sitemap pages

[nippi]

Prior to the prev / next meta tag i would add a no index, follow meta tag to all pages in a sitemap, but still give the page <title> and <h1> its unique value.

eg

Widget businesses starting with a
Widget businesses starting with a page 2

etc

Now.... we have the prev / next meta tag but in this case...

a. i don;t want any of the pages indexed anyway.
b. The prev / next does show google they are a paginated series.

what... so... i add both meta tags now?

[tedster]

Sure, add both - the prev/next tags help some browsers give the usr faster navigation, and the meta noindex keeps the URL out of the index.

However, do not put URLs that shouldn't be indexed in your xml sitemap. Search engines specifically ask that you don't do that and it can confuse things.

Same goes for redirects - do not put the source URL in the sitemap, just the target URL, the final destination.

[edited by: tedster at 9:58 pm (utc) on Jul 3, 2012]

[nippi]

goodie, that was my plan, thanks tedster

[grippo]

Is that true for category pages too? Say we have

Home - category A - item 1
................... item 2
.... - category B - item 3
................... item 4

can we say that: "only if your site has been hit by Panda, make sitemap and category pages NOINDEX,FOLLOW and PREV,NEXT your large listings."?

Am I right?

[tedster]

In the abstract that sounds OK - but first I'd try to deal with the lost rankings. BTW - are you sure you don't mean "hit by Penguin?" This doesn't sound like a Panda penalty to me.