Noindex, nofollow
A noindex, nofollow tag goes into the source code of a particular page to tell Google not to index it or follow any outgoing links from it.
It looks like this and should appear in the <head> section of your page
<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex, nofollow”>
This is very useful for when you are busy building a site and don’t want Google to index pages before they are ready. It can also be used if you have a particular page on your site you don’t want indexed, like a log-in or e-mail-only campaign page.
However, having this tag on a particular page that you do want to get search engine traffic from is a disaster.
I once had an eCommerce client wonder why their rankings for top branded searches had plummeted since launching their new site. It seemed strange, as the site was of high value and as an SEO consultant, I had drawn up a list of redirects for the site as it launched.
After exhausting all other possibilities, it was discovered that the developer had left “noindex, nofollow” on every brand page. Needless to say, we ensured these were removed as a matter of urgency and we did manage to recover most of the previous rankings.
So if you’re doing a technical review of your site, make sure you’re not inadvertently blocking off certain pages from being indexed via the use of “noindex, nofollow” in your web pages’ source code.