What SEO Geeks Argue About

Feb 13, 2012 - 8:59 am 21 by

SEO Geeks ArgueThis morning, I spotted a group of SEOs arguing about if a URL can be "indexed" if the page is blocked by a noindex tag or robots.txt file?

It is a valid SEO question but when you ask that in a room of SEO geeks, the responses can get pretty wild.

You've all seen examples of URLs in the search results that just list the URL but not the actual title tag and snippet of the page. That is typically because Google has a copy of the URL in their database as a reference but has not crawled or indexed the content on the web page because it is restricted to do so for one reason or another.

The question is, is that URL considered indexed or not? That depends on the definition of "indexed" and which SEO you ask.

Let me share the tweets about this:

The discussion went on for dozens and dozens of tweets with no one winning.

Matt or John, want to chime in and give the final answer?

Forum discussion at, um, Twitter.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Google Search Engine Optimization

Google Ranking Reddit AI Translated Pages Too Well

Apr 1, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google

Google AI Overviews Tests Check Important Info Disclaimer

Apr 1, 2025 - 7:41 am
Bing Search

Bing Tests New Sitelinks Hover Shadow & Related Search Designs

Apr 1, 2025 - 7:31 am
Bing Search

Bing Copilot Answer Buttons To Image & Video Search

Apr 1, 2025 - 7:21 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

April 2025 Google Webmaster Report

Apr 1, 2025 - 7:11 am
Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: March 31, 2025

Mar 31, 2025 - 10:00 am
Previous Story: Will Socially Awkward Sites Suffer In Google In The Long Run?