noindex page = nofollow links, is this permanent? what happens when the page becomes 'index'

[FranticFish]

My understanding is that for some time now Google has treated links to a 'noindex' page as 'nofollow'

Without going into the whys of it (another thread perhaps) I might need to noindex an entire site whilst it is marketed. Or at least, it would be nice to have that as an option - but only if it IS an option.

So my question is, if a page that was 'noindex' becomes 'index', will Google reverse its decision on treating the links to it as 'nofollow'?

[martinibuster]

Links TO a page with the noindex tag are not treated as nofollow. Google still follows them.

Noindex tells a search engine to remove a page from the search results. Google will still crawl the pages but they won't be included in the SERPs.

Robots.txt solution might be better if you want search engines to stop crawling a site (although the pages may still show up in the SERPs).

When you remove the noindex then Google will start from scratch slowly indexing the pages all over again and it may take months (depending on the size) before the pages are fully indexed and ranked.

Noindex is a granular page by page solution for removing a single page from Google's SERPs.

[FranticFish]

Thanks for your reply.

John Mueller in 2019: "Links are between indexed URLs, so if one side is gone, the link is ignored."

Me referring to it as 'nofollow' might be incorrect. What I mean is it carries no 'goodness'.

It appears the situation might have changed since then, see [seroundtable.com...]

I'm not worried about index status, I know that comes back.

I'm worried about links that are 'ignored' forever losing their ability to help a page or a domain - even when the indexing / crawling situation returns to normal..

In this case, as you say, I probably should use robots.txt instead. Do you - or anyone here - have experience of building links to a domain blocked with robots.txt, to give it a head start and hopefully rank faster when Google is allowed in?

[NickMNS]

What Martinibuster explains is technically correct, but it ignores the point that John Muller was making in his statement.

There are two benefits to "following" a link:
1- assign the page "page rank"
2- follow any links that appear on that page.

The "no-follow" directive tells Google:
1- don't assign page-rank to this page
2- don't follow or crawl any links that appear on the page.

If a page is not in the index then these benefits cannot be assigned. So the effect is the same as no-follow. Page rank isn't assigned, and the links aren't crawled.

I'm worried about links that are 'ignored' forever losing their ability to help a page or a domain

If the page re-appears in the index then page rank can be assigned. So there is no ignored forever.

Do you - or anyone here - have experience of building links to a domain blocked with robots.txt,

Robots.txt will tell Google to stop crawling, anything in the index may remain there or it may be removed at some future point. And, as with no-index, if it's not in the index page rank can't flow through it.

Personally what you are describing sound like a giant waste of time and effort, and the probability that Google interprets your intentions incorrectly is very high, and even if it is interpreted correctly it is likely to have little or no positive impact. You will most likely cause more harm than good.

[FranticFish]

Thanks for your reply. I do appreciate that it sounds like a scenario that could go very wrong. It is, it's not of my making, it's just something that has developed into a problem that needs solving, a situation I've not encountered, which is why I'm seeking advice.

All I can say is that I'm trying to run through ways I might be able to help someone out of a situation they are in where they might well need to replace Domain A with Domain B.

[martinibuster]

My answer is correct in every way and ignores nothing pertinent to this discussion. :)

A couple problems with Nick's response.

Nofollow is a hint and not a directive

The "no-follow" directive tells Google:

Nofollow is no longer a directive. It's just a hint, like canonicals. Same with Bing. So if one wants a specific behavior, one cannot depend on nofollow. However, the OP's post is not about nofollow, so that kind of doesn't matter but just wanted to clear that up so that someone else doesn't take that misconception for truth.

What is Noindex?

Not sure if you're talking about the noindex tag here:

If a page is not in the index then these benefits cannot be assigned.

What the noindex tag does is drop the page from Google's Search Results, but Google still crawls the page and sees it. The tag simply stops the page from being shown in Google's search results. That's what Google's Help page [developers.google.com] says:

"You can prevent a page or other resource from appearing in Google Search by including a noindex meta tag"

Gary Illyes tweeted [twitter.com]:

"something with noindex will never reach the serving index, but we will have the fetched copy for things like link graph calculation."

So Google still fetches the noindex page and Google still uses it for the link graph calculation. The effect of the noindex is simply to exclude it from being shown in the search results, as Google's Help Page states.

1. Robots.txt will stop the crawl and Google won't see the page at all.

2. Noindex will not stop the crawl but Google will not show the page in the search results.

My answer regarding links TO the page is the same.

Mueller's Comment Quoted Out of Context

FranticFish, John Mueller's comment is taken out of context, read his tweet, not the out of context interpretation of it.

Mueller tweeted [twitter.com]:

"Returning 404 (removing it from the index) would be the right way to get them dropped. Links are between indexed URLs, so if one side is gone, the link is ignored."

The context of the above statement is that the one side is gone because it's 404'd.

So NOW when you read Illyes' statement that the noindexed page will still be used in the link graph, it makes sense. The problem is how Mueller's statement was removed from its context and made to mean something it wasn't meant to address.

Clear as mud? ;)

[edited by: martinibuster at 4:21 pm (utc) on Nov 22, 2021]

[NickMNS]

Clear as mud? ;)

Exactly, up until the next time someone at Google decides to contradict what the last person said.

The bottom line is that this all a bunch of BS. If you gotten to the point where you are strategically adding no-index or no-follow tags on pages in an attempt to increase you ranking than there is much bigger problem at play.

[martinibuster]

the next time someone at Google decides to contradict what the last person said.

Sorry, I just updated my post to address the seeming contradiction. The contradiction is from SERoundtable, not from the Googler's.

SER took Mueller's comment out of context. The context was in reference to a 404 page that FORMERLY contained spam links to another page (a hypothetical suggested by searchmartin).

"Returning 404 (removing it from the index) would be the right way to get them dropped. Links are between indexed URLs, so if one side is gone, the link is ignored."

Gary Illyes statement does not contradict.

EVERY time someone says Googlers are contradicting themselves, there's usually an article misinterpreting what they said that's to blame. Every single time.

[FranticFish]

So NOW when you read Illyes' statement that the noindexed page will still be used in the link graph, it makes sense

Agreed. So noindex might be an option because the damage done (from my point of view here) is not forever.

And (as I had forgotten but your first post reminded me) if there are pages from sites blocked in robots.txt listed in the SERPS that indicates to me that links to them are being noted.

This is all to do with a road I would rather not go down, but it has helped clarify things in my head about the (de)merits of the choice. Thank you both for all your input, it is very welcome.

[jediviper]

Noindex tag can also be ignored by Google.
I have seen examples of pages that were indexed no matter that they had the Noindex/Nofollow header tag.

[martinibuster]

Noindex tag can also be ignored by Google.

That's incorrect and it may be because you aren't aware of what noindex actually does, which is fairly common, apparently. This stems from the fact that the word "index" has multiple meanings (to crawl, a group of sites, etc.).

The only thing that noindex does is to keep the page from showing in the search results.

Noindex does not block Google from crawling the page. Google can still crawl the page even with a noindex.

Noindex is a directive, which means that Google must obey it and not show the page in the search results.