What are the Pros and Cons of the "noarchive" Metatag?

Sep 19, 2007 - 9:02 am 2 by

A WebmasterWorld thread asks if there's any purpose to the 'noarchive' metatag in Google. Why use it?

A few reasons are mentioned:

  • Pages that are constantly updated should not be showing the wrong information in the cache so as not ti mislead users.
  • News sites don't want to cache information because they don't want the world to access the data well after publication. In their minds, it should only be available to subscribers at that time.
  • Some people just don't feel that Google should republish their content without permission.
  • You're cloaking your pages and don't want to be reported. This is something that Barry has expounded upon, saying that in the past, cloakers would utilize this tag to prevent Google from showing the cloaked content. However, Google would flag sites that used that tag. He suspects it's no longer done.
  • You want to prohibit scraper sites from lifting content off your cached pages.

Good points. I wonder if anyone has any others to add. If so, join the discussion at WebmasterWorld.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
- YouTube
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: May 19, 2025

May 19, 2025 - 10:00 am
Google

Google Begins Rolling Out Discover On Desktop

May 19, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google Merchant Center Now Recommends Product's Brand Name In Title

May 19, 2025 - 7:41 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google Sitemap Error For Some International 5 Character Subdomains

May 19, 2025 - 7:31 am
Google

Google Search Begins Migrating Off Country Specific ccTLDs

May 19, 2025 - 7:21 am
Google Ads

Google Ads Spending Bug With New Customer Acquisition Since May 15

May 19, 2025 - 7:11 am
Previous Story: Talk Like A Pirate Day: Dogpile, Flickr, Roundtable & Others