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1. mindcry
   Member
   Posted 2 years ago #

   Quick question regarding noindex usage, I see plenty of people noindex all their archives to avoid duplicate content.

   I see in the meta robots plugin intro video Joost uses noindex for subpages but not his category archives section. why leave 1 archive type indexed?

   From a lot of Googling and checking a dozen websites or so it seems no one uses noindex for all their archives and subpages.

   surely its all duplicate content? would it not be best to only index your front page, pages and posts, nothing else?

   or have I missed something....

   thanks alot.

2. Micah Cooksey
   Moderator
   Posted 2 years ago #

   Bumping post takes you off the no replies list, thereby reducing your chances of getting helped.

   As far as subpages, they're not duplicate content unless you've put duplicate content there. If you have, say a "dogs" parent page and sub-pages for different kinds of dogs, it's all unique content unless you're putting the same content on each page. It therefor makes sense to have as many pages as you can indexed.
   Some people don't like to index their category pages because they're full of links. That's up to you, though.

3. mindcry
   Member
   Posted 2 years ago #

   Thanks for the reply Micah,

   1 last question though, by subpages i mean the link on your front page to previous entries, perhaps i used the wrong terminology.

   You would have the post, the same post in category archive, and again in the subpages of your main page. all 3 being the same content.

   Would it not be correct to noindex both your archive and subpages, since they are duplicates of your post?

4. Micah Cooksey
   Moderator
   Posted 2 years ago #

   If there are three links to the same page, that's not duplicate content, but if your category archives show the whole post, not just the title, you should noindex them.

   Are you asking about the post displayed on the "posts" page and then the actual post? I've never thought about that being duplicate content or not. Someone help me out here.

5. mindcry
   Member
   Posted 2 years ago #

   I don't use the except on with my blog. My archives etc. aren't showing the whole post, but do show 2-3 paragraphs of it normally. Enough for google to flag it as duplicate I would expect.

   A little on my experience also, just for your info. My site at the time had about 210 unique pages. but google webmaster tools had been reporting about 140 indexed pages since passing that point.

   After no indexing my category archives this number climbed up to 160 over the next week or so, but again stopped there.

   After noindexing my main subpages also, over the last 4 days a few more pages have been added according to google webpages. this would suggest to me its regarding the 3 sources ( post, category, home subpages ) as duplicate content no?

   My blog shows 5 articles per page, seems to me its indexing 1 archive or sub page instead of the posts themselves.

   I'll post back again in a week or so and let you know if webmaster tools reports more pages indexed now that i've noindexed subpages and category if you like, just for your future reference.

   My blog is http://www.andrewkeir.com by the way, probably should have included that earlier :P

6. mindcry
   Member
   Posted 2 years ago #

   One more bit of info,

   The thing that page me click to noindexing the subpages was my google site links. Before I had important pages like my portfolio, hire me, contact me etc etc.

   But checking recently 5 of my 8 site links were

   http://www.andrewkeir.com/page/2/
   http://www.andrewkeir.com/page/4/
   http://www.andrewkeir.com/page/7/
   http://www.andrewkeir.com/page/11/
   http://www.andrewkeir.com/page/13/

   This would mean my subpages are getting more juice then my posts obviously?

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