What to Know:
– Google’s John Mueller recently explained how Google treats a meta robots tag that contains the index, follow directive.
– The meta robots tag is used to provide instructions to search engines about how to crawl and index a webpage.
– The index directive tells search engines whether or not to include the webpage in their index, while the follow directive tells search engines whether or not to follow the links on the webpage.
– According to Mueller, if a webpage has a meta robots tag with the index, follow directive, Google will crawl and index the webpage, and also follow the links on the webpage.
– However, Mueller also mentioned that Google’s algorithms may still choose not to include the webpage in search results, even if it is crawled and indexed.
The Full Story:
Google’s John Mueller recently explained how Google treats a meta robots tag that contains the index, follow directive. The meta robots tag is used to provide instructions to search engines about how to crawl and index a webpage. The index directive tells search engines whether or not to include the webpage in their index, while the follow directive tells search engines whether or not to follow the links on the webpage.
According to Mueller, if a webpage has a meta robots tag with the index, follow directive, Google will crawl and index the webpage, and also follow the links on the webpage. This means that the webpage will be included in Google’s index and the links on the webpage will be followed and potentially indexed as well.
However, Mueller also mentioned that Google’s algorithms may still choose not to include the webpage in search results, even if it is crawled and indexed. This could be due to various factors, such as the quality of the content on the webpage or the relevance of the webpage to a particular search query.
Mueller’s explanation provides some clarity on how Google treats the index, follow directive in a meta robots tag. It confirms that if a webpage has this directive, Google will crawl and index the webpage, and follow the links on the webpage. However, it also highlights that being crawled and indexed does not guarantee inclusion in search results.
This information is important for website owners and SEO professionals who want to ensure that their webpages are properly crawled and indexed by Google. By using the index, follow directive in the meta robots tag, they can signal to Google that the webpage should be included in the index and that the links on the webpage should be followed.
It’s worth noting that the index, follow directive is the default behavior for Google. This means that if a webpage does not have a meta robots tag, Google will assume that the webpage should be indexed and the links on the webpage should be followed. However, it’s still recommended to include a meta robots tag with the desired directives to provide explicit instructions to search engines.
In addition to the index, follow directive, there are other directives that can be used in a meta robots tag. The noindex directive tells search engines not to include the webpage in their index, while the nofollow directive tells search engines not to follow the links on the webpage. These directives can be used to control how search engines crawl and index a webpage.
In conclusion, Google’s John Mueller has explained how Google treats a meta robots tag that contains the index, follow directive. If a webpage has this directive, Google will crawl and index the webpage, and follow the links on the webpage. However, being crawled and indexed does not guarantee inclusion in search results, as Google’s algorithms may still choose not to include the webpage based on various factors. Website owners and SEO professionals can use the index, follow directive in the meta robots tag to signal to Google that the webpage should be included in the index and that the links on the webpage should be followed.
Original article: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-explains-the-index-follow-meta-tag/505522/