Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Best way to noindex an image?
-
Hi all,
A client wanted a few pages noindexed, which was no problem using the meta robots noindex tag.
However they now want associated images removed, some of which still appear on pages that they still want indexed. I added the images to their robots.txt file a few weeks ago (probably over a month ago actually) but they're all still showing when you do an image search.
What's the best way to noindex them for good, and how do I go about implementing it?
Many thanks,
Steve
-
The noindex meta tag keeps the page out of the index but since images have their own url, it doesn't keep them out of the index, so you should use the noimageindex directive on the pages where the images in question reside.
-
Thanks Chris! So, in my instance, should I just add that directive to the 2 pages that feature the images but are still indexed? Or should I also include it to those pages that are noindexed, just to be on the safe side?
-
Steve, As long as no other resources are are linking to your images, you could use the noimageindex directive as such:
-
Thanks Ash. I've just found this Google resource about it - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/59819?hl=en - that says "URL removal requests expire after 90 days, after which the content may appear in our search results again." Is that true? Is there a more permanent way or would I/the client have to manually re-remove it every 90 days?
-
You have to remove the images via Google Webmaster Tools. This support document has the instructions: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/181721?hl=en
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google Image Search - Is there a way to influence the related icons at the top of the image search results?
Google recently added related icons at the top of the image search results page. Some of the icons may be unrelated to the search. Are there any best practices to influence what is positioned in the related image icons section? Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JaredBroussard1 -
Redirect old image that has backlinks
Hi Moz Community! I'm doing an audit of a website and did a backlink analysis. In the backlink analysis, there is an image that has 66 backlinks but the image doesn't exist on the website anymore (it was on a website that was created in 2011 - 2 web launches ago). I don't believe a 301 redirect will work for an image that doesn't exist anymore. How would I redirect the image URL (it's WordPress so we have a specific URL that other websites are linking to but get 404 errors) without going to each individual website and requesting they change the URL link? Any advice or recommendations would be great. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BradChandler1 -
Best practice for retiring old product pages
We’re a software company. Would someone be able to help me with a basic process for retiring old product pages and re-directing the SEO value to new pages. We are retiring some old products to focus on new products. The new software has much similar functionality to the old software, but has more features. How can we ensure that the new pages get the best start in life? Also, what is the best way of doing this for users? Our plan currently is to: Leave the old pages up initially with a message to the user that the old software has been retired. There will also be a message explaining that the user might be interested in one of our new products and a link to the new pages. When traffic to these pages reduces, then we will delete these pages and re-direct them to the homepage. Has anyone got any recommendations for how we could approach this differently? One idea that I’m considering is to immediately re-direct the old product pages to the new pages. I was wondering if we could then provide a message to the user explaining that the old product has been retired but that the new improved product is available. I’d also be interested in pointing the re-directs to the new product pages that are most relevant rather than the homepage, so that they get the value of the old links. I’ve found in the past that old retirement pages for products can outrank the new pages as until you 301 them then all the links and authority flow to these pages. Any help would be very much appreciated 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RG_SEO0 -
Best server-side sitemap generators
I've been looking into sitemap generators recently and have got a good knowledge of what creating a sitemap for a small website of below 500 URLs involves. I have successfully generated a sitemap for a very small site, but I’m trying to work out the best way of crawling a large site with millions of URLs. I’ve decided that the best way to crawl such a large number of URLs is to use a server side sitemap, but this is an area that doesn’t seem to be covered in detail on SEO blogs / forums. Could anyone recommend a good server side sitemap generator? What do you think of the automated offerings from Google and Bing? I’ve found a list of server side sitemap generators from Google, but I can’t see any way to choose between them. I realise that a lot will depend on the type of technologies we use server side, but I'm afraid that I don't know them at this time.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RG_SEO0 -
Noindex xml RSS feed
Hey, How can I tell search engines not to index my xml RSS feed? The RSS feed is created by Yoast on WordPress. Thanks, Luke.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NoisyLittleMonkey0 -
Noindex : Do Follow or No Follow Tags?
Hello, I have a website with tags (which have the noindex tag) on each article post. I've been told that I should noindex/nofollow these tag pages, because they are getting link juice passed to them, and since they aren't getting indexed, it's wasting link juice to those pages, when the link juice could be passed to a page that is actually getting indexed. What are your thoughts on this? Also, what would be the point to noindex/follow a page, if you are noindexing that page? Isn't it just wasting link juice? What is the proper SEO way to optimize tags.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
Image Maps
Hey forum, I'm curious about Image Maps. Few things I'm not sure about: 1. Will the links be followed? If so, will Google respect rel="nofollow"? 2. Will the image be considered 1 image? (indexed as image, etc.) Or will each map segment be treated as a separate image? 3. Any other SEO pros\cons to consider when adding an image map to an existing page? Thanks, Corwin.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | corwin0 -
Best way to merge 2 ecommerce sites
Our Client owns two ecommerce websites. Website A sells 20 related brands. Website has improving search rank, but not normally on the second to fourth page of google. Website B was purchased from a competitor. It has 1 brand (also sold on site A). Search results are normally high on the first page of google. Client wants to consider merging the two sites. We are looking at options. Option 1: Do nothing, site B dominates it’s brand, but this will not do anything to boost site A. Option 2: keep both sites running, but put lots of canonical tags on site B pointing to site A Option 3: close down site B and make a lot of 301 redirects to site A Option 4: ??? Any thoughts on this would be great. We want to do this in a way that boosts site A as much as possible without losing sales on the one brand that site B sells.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EugeneF0