Hi,

There's a bug that makes the tag noindex to show up in the front page. My site lost the homepage from the Google index and I had no idea how that happened. I thought it’s some Google penalty but it was that tag only showing up in .
This is a critical bug and to make this worse the new functionality “Remove ads from remote search engines” is on by default.

Thanks,
introfini

Comments

jeremy’s picture

jeremy commented
Status: Active » Fixed

If you are displaying ad nodes on your front page, then you will get the noindex meta tag there. I doubt that this is a typical configuration -- but as you have noticed if you have configured your website this way you will want to disable "Remove ads from remote search engines".

Documentation updated to better explain this.

introfini’s picture

introfini commented
Status: Fixed » Active

"The 'noindex' tag is not added when ads are displayed via blocks, direct calls to ad(), using views, or when embedded with the ad_embed module."

There's something wrong because the ads are beeing dispayed via blocks.

Thanks,
introfini

jeremy’s picture

jeremy commented
Priority: Critical » Normal
Status: Active » Postponed (maintainer needs more info)

I am unable to duplicate. What ad modules are you using? Do you have a custom front page type, or the default node listing front page? What may be nonstandard about your configuration?

introfini’s picture

introfini commented

Yes, I have a custom homepage but the ads are being displayed via blocks in theme regions.

jeremy’s picture

jeremy commented

What are you using for your custom homepage? Evidently this is confusingthe noindex logic into thinking you are displaying ad nodes on your front page.

introfini’s picture

introfini commented
Assigned: Unassigned » introfini

Hi Jeremy,

I'll try to do the debugging myself and then I will let you know what I find out.

Thanks.

3dloco’s picture

3dloco commented
Title: noindex meta tag goes to the front page » noindex meta tag goes to ALL pages with an AD
Priority: Normal » Critical
Issue tags: +Metatags, +indexing, +noindex, +advertisement, +no index

Hello,

I was lucky to finally come across this post as I have painfully lost ranking and indexing due to this issue of a noindex meta appearing on pages.

I am currently using 6.x-2.1 with 6.13, I have one ad a block that displays on several pages including the home page. My front page is a custom frontpage (just a node page).

Unchecking the "remove ads from remote search engines" fixed the noindex meta on all a bunch of pages including homepage, blog, blog posting, ubercart product view, etc.

I raised its priority to critical since really all efforts are fruitless if one has a NOINDEX tag one can't control or did not know about like that...hmm SEO folks were pulling their hair out!

Meanwhile, I think it would be most helpful to have the default "remove ads from remote search engines" unchecked with an explanation that will allow us to know/check this behaviour and verify if the noindex tag is appearing on every page there is an AD (teaser/block) vs on the AD node itself.

Thanks,

KH

jeremy’s picture

jeremy commented

How are you building your custom homepage? Displaying ads in the default block should not cause the NOINDEX meta tag to display -- in both cases where this has been reported as an issue a custom homepage has been used.

I have gone ahead and disabled this option by default:
http://drupal.org/cvs?commit=292800

3dloco’s picture

3dloco commented

Hi,

There is nothing special about this page. The AD is on a block which is displayed on the right sidebar. At the bottom of the page I am pulling the teasers from a couple of nodes (the nodes don't have a NOINDEX metatag, since I want them to be indexed).

Below find the steps that reproduced this NOINDEX tag on the front page and all other pages that have the ad in a block.

1) Create a page (with default node type page).

2) Add the path of the page to Settings->Site Information-> Default Front Page.

3) Add frontpage metatags using the Nodewords module. Note that the nodewords module has an area to specify the robots metatags. Here, I leave the NOINDEX tag unchecked (since I want the homepage to be indexed).

4) Create the AD (image ad, with premiere status).

5) Add the AD a block using Nodes in Block module.

6) Edit the block page visibility to show the block on specific pages. In my case this list includes the frontpage.

Let me know if you need additional info.

Thanks,

KH

jeremy’s picture

jeremy commented
Assigned: introfini » jeremy
Category: bug » support
Priority: Critical » Normal

> 5) Add the AD a block using Nodes in Block module.

This is the source of your problem. If you are displaying ads this way, then as far as the ad module is concerned the ad node is being displayed: it is, it's just being displayed in a block. Why are you displaying the ads with the Nodes As Block module? Why are you not using the default blocks provided by the ad module, or at minimum by calling the ad() function in a custom block as described in the documentation? The way you are displaying ads not only causes this noindex tag to be added to all pages where your ad blocks are displayed, it also means that the ad module no longer can count how many ad impressions there are.

introfini’s picture

introfini commented

Hi Jeremy,

I'm sorry but I havent had the time to look at this :-( But in my case I wasn't using Nodes As Block module.

Here is the code for page-front.tpl.php that I was using. the ad was displayed as a block in the $homepage_right region.

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="<?php print $language->language; ?>" xml:lang="<?php print $language->language; ?>">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<title><?php print $head_title; ?></title>
<?php print $head; ?>
<?php print $styles; ?>
<?php print $scripts ?>
</head>
<body id ="front">
<div id="container">
  <div id="header">
    <?php if ($logo): ?>
...    
    <?php endif; ?>
    <div id="secondarymenu">
      <div id="login-box">
        <?php  global $user; ?>
        <?php if ($user->uid) { ?><img src="<?php print $base_path . $directory; ?>/images/icon-user.png" alt="utilizador"><?php  print theme_username($user); ?> | <img src="<?php print $base_path . $directory; ?>/images/icon-encerrar.png" alt="encerrar"><?php print l("encerrar","logout"); ?> | <img src="<?php print $base_path . $directory; ?>/images/icon-pesquisa.png" alt="pesquisar">
        <?php }else { ?><img src="<?php print $base_path . $directory; ?>/images/icon-login.png" alt="login"><a href="<?php print $base_path ?>utilizador">login</a> | <img src="<?php print $base_path . $directory; ?>/images/icon-conta.png" alt="criar conta"><a href="<?php print $base_path ?>registar">criar conta</a> | <img src="<?php print $base_path . $directory; ?>/images/icon-pesquisa.png" alt="pesquisar">
        <?php }; ?>
      </div>
    <div id="searchbox">   

    </div><img id="login-r" src="<?php print $base_path . $directory; ?>/images/login-r.gif" alt="pesquisar">    </div>
  </div><div id="menu"><?php include("menu.html");?></div>
  <div id="menuzone">
    <p><?php echo $texto; ?></p>
</div>
  <div id="wrapper">
<div id="content-wrapper">
        <div id="content">
      <?php print $homepage_left; ?></div></div>
<div id="navigation">
      <?php if ($right): ?>
      <div id="sidebar-right">
        <div id="sidebar-right-inner"> <?php print $homepage_right; ?> </div>
      </div>
      <?php endif; ?>
    </div>
<div id="extra"></div>
</div>
<div id="footer">
    <p><?php print $footer_message ?></p>
  </div>
</div>
<script type="text/javascript" src="<?php print $base_path.$directory?>/js/menu.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript"><?php /* Needed to avoid Flash of Unstyle Content in IE */ ?> </script>
<?php print $closure ?>
</body>
</html>

Hope it helps...

3dloco’s picture

3dloco commented
Issue tags: +Nodes in Block

Jeremy,

Thanks for your response and explanation...this could be very well the cause of this I will test in a couple of days and advise.

I am using Nodes in Block as it allows non-admin users to choose whether a node should display in existing blocks when they are creating/editing content.

Thanks,

KH

3dloco’s picture

3dloco commented

Jeremy

I was able to confirm that placing Ads in a block provided by the Nodes in Block was the source of the NOINDEX metatag showing up on all pages that contained this block.

Here is what I did to confirm this.

1) Removed the Ads from the block provided by Nodes in Block.
2) Enabled the block provided by Ad module.
3) Checked the "remove ads from remote search engines" Ad->Settings
4) Noindex metatag is gone and no longer appears on the pages were this block appears.

Would this be more of a Nodes in Block issue then?

Thanks

KH

jeremy’s picture

jeremy commented

@3dloco: There is no bug. If an ad node is displayed on a page, then a meta tag is added telling search engines to not index the page. In your case, you're putting an ad node on many pages using blocks -- so the ad logic is working as designed.

dave reid’s picture

dave reid
he/him
Primary language English
Location Nebraska USA
commented
Issue tags: -Metatags

Removing tag.

lrwebks’s picture

lrwebks commented
Issue summary: View changes
Status: Postponed (maintainer needs more info) » Closed (outdated)

Drupal 6 is EOL and no longer supported. Closing this as outdated for that reason. Thanks for your contribution!