Noindex pages being indexed

[carl_daedricdigital]

Hi all

Wondering if anyone could offer a pointer on a problem i am having please. I am developing an affiliate store and to prevent problems with duplicate content I have added name="robots" content="NOINDEX,FOLLOW" /> to all the product pages to avoid google penalties.

However, Google appears to be indexing product pages. When I do a site: search I see a few hundred product pages in the engine. This is odd as the site has always had noindex on these pages. Even viewing the cache of the indexed page shows the noindex meta tag to be in place.

I'm at a loss as to why these pages are being indexed and could do with removing them asap to stop any penalties on the site.

Many thanks for any help.

[Schwaab]

This post is deleted!

[WesleySmits]

Perhaps you could give us a link to your website using the following notation: domainname (dot) TLD It's difficult to tell you what the problem is without being able to take a look at your site.

[carl_daedricdigital]

hi, yes, maybe should have added that to start with. The site is yochic. co. uk  - it is still being worked on so bear that in mind with random products in the wrong places or wonky looking menus.

The category pages are set to be indexed so no problem there, the product pages are the ones which contain the most duplicate content so have been blocked, but a number are still going in the listing.

[WesleySmits]

Okay, i have found the indexing problem. The noindex meta tag should be placed within the head section of your HTML. It is now in your body content so it's not getting used.

Are you sure you want to no-index product pages though? These are very important pages on your site and there are other ways to fix duplicate content issues.

Most duplicate content issues on pages comes from the fact that most CMS systems have the same product at different URL's. On your site i see http://yochic.co.uk/dress-267864/bodycon/black-cut-out-side-bodycon-dress.html and http://yochic.co.uk/black-cut-out-side-bodycon-dress.html

Same product, different URL. This could be fixed by adding a rel="canonical" on product pages which links back to the preferred version. Easiest would be to link back to www.domain.com/product.html

This would solve most duplicate content issues without having to deindex them.

Hope i was helpful, if you have any questions left, feel free to ask me.

[carl_daedricdigital]

Thanks for taking the time to look at the site.

Not sure why the code is coming in the wrong place it is using a magento seo plugin so will need to chase them up on that. Just searched a random selection of pages and the code seems to be in the header section on all of those, so it seems there are some pages not playing nicely.

I would like to index the product pages but there are over 250,000 items pulled from the merchants and no chance of writing that much unique content so I feel safest to noindex them all. The main traffic strategy will be to use content which will promote items, such as fashion advice pieces etc.

In the example you give, that seems to be a problem with the categories, will check that out, thanks for pointing it out.