Welcome folks to another article about Google’s crawl and indexing update. Google is all set to launch another update related to no-follow links. This comes after the broad core update which they launched in January this year. Google’s crawl update and Google’s indexing update for no-follow links is something that Google was planning to launch from a long time. In fact Google’s crawl and indexing update will change the way Google bots looks at the no-follow links.
So, what is this Google’s crawl and Indexing Update?
Prior to this update Google bots we not crawling or indexing any no-follow links. This is going to change on 1st March 2020.
Google bots will not take into consideration the no-follow links. This would not be for the purpose of link juice sharing.
However, this will be solely for the purpose of craw and indexing.
They did mentioned this before. Take a look at the tweet done in 2019.
All the no-follow links as mentioned in the tweet above will now work as hints for Google from 1st March 2020.
This is what Google quoted
No-follow policies and implementation
First questions what kind of web pages webmaster dot not want Google to crawl or index.
Pages like the login page, user profile or for that matter any web page that does not hold any value. Sometime, also called as the thin pages.
I have seen a lot of webmasters using the no-follow attribute to block Google crawling their pages.
This is never a good practice. I personally feel that meta robots no-index directive is more effective way of telling Google which pages to exclude.
What will be the effect on rankings?
As of now, I am not sure. The reason is the even Google knows that thin pages are not to be crawled as they are of little relevance.
However, I do not know how this update algorithm is going to behave.
They might set some rules as well in the update algorithm. This will ensure that good content sites do not get penalized just because of thin pages.
I am going to publish another article on this update once it’s rolled out and If I see a variation in the daily traffic on my blog.
Taking guard before the Google’s crawl and Indexing Update
I would say there are a couple of things you might want to pay attention to. Listing both of them below.
You can check all your no-follow links here.
- Review your no-follow links: This is the first thing you should do. I did the same. I went through all the no-follow links. There were few which needed attention. Any poorly set up no-follow links can get you into trouble. So remove them and move to a meta robots no-index.
- Beware of the update: Keep a tab on the traffic on your website. Especially after 1st March 2020. If there is a negative flux you might want to check your no-follow links once again. If you see a dip check and investigate how the update is affecting your website.
That’s about it folks, if you have any question which I reckon you might have please leave them in the comments below.
Check out more about SEO on my blog and other Google Updates by Year.
