Google Details the Index and Follow Meta Tag

Google’s John Mueller Reveals Astonishing Details about Robots Meta Tag

Google’s John Mueller recently addressed a popular query related to the Robots Meta Tag’s behavior when it is missing from the webpage, surprising many SEO experts and publishers.

Decoding the Robots Meta Tag

HTML metadata transmitted through the Meta Element can be interpreted by automated crawlers like Googlebot. The Robots Meta Element, unlike other meta information like the Meta Description Element, influences the activity of search engine bots.

In simple terms, the robot crawlers are required to follow the instructions given in the Robots Meta Tag, referred to as a “directive”.

The two common directives shared via the Robots Meta Tag are the ‘noindex, nofollow’ and ‘index, follow’ meta tags.

The ‘noindex, nofollow’ directive instructs the search engine crawlers to refrain from indexing the webpage content and avoid following any links.

The ‘index, follow’ command instructs search engine bots to index the content and follow any associated links.

Despite its commonly acknowledged usage, Google’s interpretation of these directives may be misunderstood, as clarified by John Mueller.

What Implications Does the Absence of the Meta Robots Index Tag Have?

An inquisitive SEO enthusiast on Reddit posed a question regarding the impact of the ‘index’ tag’s absence on a website’s functioning. The user’s confusion stemmed from commonly used meta snippets on their managed websites, appearing similar to: <meta name=’robots’ content=’index, follow’ ….

John Mueller responded by revealing that the ‘index’ and ‘follow’ Robots Meta Tag are inconsequential and completely disregarded by Google.

He cited Google’s official documentation on special meta tags and Robots Meta Tag, asserting that any meta tag beyond these references would be ignored.

Why Does Google Overlook Robots Index & Follow?

The fundamental reason behind Google’s dismissal of the Robots ‘index’ and ‘follow’ meta tags is that these actions are default behaviors for search engine bots. By nature, search bots are designed to index content and follow links, thus there’s no need to indicate these instructions.

Google’s official documentation on Robots Tags recommends:

“The default values are index, follow and don’t need to be specified.”

Consequently, any Robots Meta that is not listed here would be disregarded by the Googlebot.

Is the Index, Follow Tag Completely Redundant?

Though the ‘index, follow’ tag is insignificant to Googlebot, Bing’s approach slightly varies, as documented in their official guidelines. Bing assumes ‘index’ and ‘follow’ by default, but users can explicitly state these directives if they prefer.

However, some publishers may misunderstand that the ‘noindex, follow’ directive allows the search engine to follow links on a non-indexed page. The truth is that Google cannot follow a link on a page not indexed. If a page is not part of the index, its links won’t be either.

As an SEO professional, my principle is to furnish what bots typically anticipate and eliminate anything unconventional, making their indexing and understanding of content smoother.

Learn more:- How To Control Googlebot’s Interaction With Your Website

Read further:- How To Get Google To Index Your Site (Quickly)

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