Google's Gary Illyes On Noindex With Redirects

Feb 20, 2023 - 7:11 am 0 by

Google Cat Vector

What happens when the noindex, nofollow directives are in the HTTP header and that URL is also being redirected somewhere, will Google respect or ignore the directive. Gary Illyes from Google hinted that Google will likely ignore the directive to be safe.

William Sears asked Gary Illyes "Will directives (noindex, nofollow) from a URL that redirects (301, 302) be respected or ignored?" "This particular use case the noindex, nofollow directives are in the HTTP header, so crawling the HTML would not be required to see the directive," he added for clarification.

Gary Illyes from Google had to provide a vague response, he said on Mastodon, " I need to be reasonably vague here and I hate it and I apologize for that."

His response was, "I think we shouldn't forward the noindex with redirects unless we can be exceptionally certain that the target also wants the noindex. I imagine that on same site the noindex would forward in some cases, but across sites it would not. This is a pretty bad hijack vector, hence being vague."

Here is a screenshot of the full conversation:

Google Noindex Redirects Seo

Forum discussion at Mastodon.

 

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: April 29, 2025

Apr 29, 2025 - 10:00 am
Other Search Engines

ChatGPT Search Gains Shopping Search Features (Not Ads) & More

Apr 29, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google: Changing Lastmod Date In Sitemap Isn't An SEO Hack

Apr 29, 2025 - 7:41 am
Bing Search

Bing Tests New AI Answer Summary

Apr 29, 2025 - 7:31 am
Google Ads

Google Tests New Shopping Ads Design

Apr 29, 2025 - 7:21 am
Bing Search

Bing Search Without Microsoft Name By Logo

Apr 29, 2025 - 7:11 am
Previous Story: John Mueller With Smoke Coming Out Of Head