Accidently added a nofollow, noindex tag and then...

[bonusjonathan]

Hey guys,

My first post here and ironically highlights a ridiculously stupid mistake!

Ok, here's the deal...

I started building links to one of my new page on a fairly good, old site (DA = >35).

Before starting to build links, I added fresh new content, and while doing that, I accidentally added a "nofollow" and "noindex" tag to the page! Guess what, google DID de-index the page !

So the questions is (and YES, I did change the meta tags):

1. Will google re-index the page with some good linking?

2. Will it treat the page as a new, fresh page even though it was present for over a year?

3. I had already started link building to that page, and now technically the links are pointing to a page that does not exist in the index, so once it does get re-indexed, will Google FLAG it as having too many links?

4. Would I be ranking it as a new page? Will its previous ranking (for very few keywords) will come back?

Thanks and Regards,

Amod

[AndrewAkesson]

Hi Amod,

There are my thoughts:

1. Yes, of course Google we re-index the page. With or without 'good linking', next time it crawls the page (and it'll do that regardless of any new link building activity) it will see the tag has changed and include it in the index again.

2. No, it will be aware of the age of the page.

3. No, Google has already indexed all of the links pointing to your site. It won't suddenly forget that just because you added a noindex to your page. They're 2 seperate entities.

4. The rankings will come back, but it will take time. I've read blog posts about this in the past, perhaps someone else here could give an estimate? I'd imagine it depends on the strength of the page.

Thanks,

Matt

[Paul78]

Hi Amod,

I have also experienced this, our developer accidentally placed this "nofollow" tag across the entire website.

1. Yes, just get Google to fetch your pages via webmaster tools.

2. No.

3. No.

4). Rankings will come back as Matt has pointed out, no need to worry.

[irvingw]

Totally not an issue to be concerned about on any of those questions you asked - just remove the noindex tag and submit the URL(s) in WMT for Google to respider those specific pages faster, you'll be back up and running in no time.