Meta Robot Tag:Index, Follow, Noodp, Noydir

[Kingalan1]

When should "Noodp" and "Noydir" meta robot tag be used?

I have hundreds or URLs for real estate listings on my site that simply use "Index", Follow" without using Noodp and Noydir. Should the listing pages use these Noodp and Noydr also? All major landing pages use Index, Follow, Noodp, Noydir. Is this the best setting in terms of ranking and SEO.

Thanks, Alan

[Linda-Vassily]

Noodp= No Open Directory Project
Noydir= No Yahoo Directory

These are used if your website is listed in one of these directories with information you do not want used in the results pages. This might be the case if you have old, outdated listings that no longer apply. They tell robots not to use information from these sources, and they are optional.

[AlanBleiweiss]

I'll just add that Yahoo closed the Yahoo Directory down last year.

[Kingalan1]

Thanks Linda!!

So by adding the noydir for instance, the specific URL would not be indexed by Yahoo?

I don't quite understand the utility of this!!! I would think that something like a property listing should appear.

For instance our home page has this tag set up like this: name="robots" content="noodp,noydir"/><meta< span=""></meta<>

Wouldn't this exclude our home page from Yahoo and the Open Directory? Now I am particularly concerned because most of our major landing pages have the "noodp,noydir" tag.

Are we doing something wrong??

In term of my original question, are site has many listings and the default tag is 
name="robots" content="index, follow"/><meta< span=""></meta<>

Is there any downside to setting up this way?

Thanks!!! Alan

[Linda-Vassily]

Yes, for the most part "index, follow" is what you want on your pages.

But no, the "noodp, noydir" tags do not prevent you from being in the directories (though as Alan pointed out, the Yahoo one isn't around anymore), they just prevent the descriptions from being used.

Google does not always use the title and description found on your page, it sometimes chooses something it deems more relevant. Sometimes this is the description from the Open Directory Project (DMOZ). Sometimes this is not a good thing to choose.

Maybe your site was quite different when it was submitted to the directory, and the information there no longer applies. You want to tell Google not to use what is in there, so you use noodp in the header.

Whether you use or do not use "noodp, noydir", it won't hurt your rankings.

The only reason you might want to make sure to use them is if you saw unexpected content in the descriptions of your pages in the search results pages, and you had reason to believe the descriptions came from DMOZ. In that case, to prevent that from happening, you would use those additional tags, along with "index, follow".

[first.click]

I'll add further that Open Directory (DMOZ) will be shutting down March 14 (2017).

And so the internet outgrows it's training wheels....

[vidiu341]

Hey,

Can anyone help me out with how I can add keywords with noodp directives?