How to make google not index quotes from other sites?

[StefanJDorresteijn]

Hey guys,

I have a site where we post quite a lot of info from other sites. We don't want google to de-index our pages because parts of it are quotes from other sites. What would you use to make it so Google sees it's a quote from another site? Or to just make Google not index the quote?

Thanks!

[AdeLewis]

Hi,

I would say that you have a couple of options:-

1. Add a nofollow tag to the head of the page so that it doesn't get indexed

<meta name="robots" content="noindex, follow" />

2. Add a canonical link to the head of the page pointing back to the original content

<link href="http://www.original-site.com"rel="canonical">

I would try to go for the 2nd option if possible but it can be difficult to implement if you are using a CMS system. Also make sure that you don't have more quoted content on your site than you have original content.

[gfiorelli1]

1. Add a nofollow tag to the head of the page so that it doesn't get indexed

<meta name="robots" content="noindex, follow" />

I think you meant: Add a noindex tag..., right?

[gfiorelli1]

If the quotes are just part of the content and not a big part of the content, I would not worry too much about eventual problems, always if you cite the source of the quote.

If the quote substantially means the highest % of the page content, but you want the page to be indexed, then the use of the canonical tag with the original source in it, it's not the solution, because the SE will filter out your page and show the source only. In that case I think that a link back to the source could be enough.

There could be an alternative, but it is just an idea as i don't know if it could work in your case: to use a schema (microdata) in order to better specify the source to the SE: http://schema.org/Article and  http://schema.org/BlogPosting

Then, if you don't want to have the quoting pages be seen at all, then simply don't make them indexable with noindex,follow or use the canonical tag with the source url in.

[AdeLewis]

Hi Gianluca,

Yes I did - Thanks for pointing it out

[StefanJDorresteijn]

We're using Vbulletin and we do really want the rest of page to get indexed. I'll just link back to them then. Thanks to both of you!