What does it mean when a store page has 'no index' in the source code? Is it invisible to Google?

[CreativeLeahG]

One of my stores has the text 'no index' in the source code.

Does this mean this store is not visible to Google, if so how does this affect the products in that store.

Another store I looked at hadn't got this text (that I could see).

Thank you

[Marcia]

@Malissa I still don't see it. I found it on @JimCarnicelli 's example card but unless I'm blind I can't find it on yours.

[Malissa]

@MarciaDid you go to line 135?  It's still there. I just copy pasted that line of code from it when I replied a little while ago. 

[Malissa]

@Marcia I just checked your code from your main product page and you have the "no index" tag as well on the store linked to your forum profile.  

I am on a MacBook Pro and I use the Firefox browser to check the code because you can easily right click to bring up the page source option.

[ColsCreations]

Well, that is an interesting development. When I checked her store upthread on 7/31 it did not have the no-index.

[Malissa]

What page are you checking? I am checking the main product page on stores and I am finding it on every store I look at.  Both of your stores that are in your profile have it as well on the main product page.  I can't find it on individual product pages, though I haven't looked at anyone else's individual products but mine.  Can it be browser specific? I am checking on Firefox.

[Marcia]

Yeah, now this is driving me crazy so I've been checking on product pages of people I know are top sellers here & it's on everyone's pages. Using Chrome.

[Malissa]

That makes me feel confident that it is not an issue that is preventing our product from being seen.  I think when we go poking around code and don't have an understanding on how a website works under the hood we are opening ourselves up to a lot of headaches for nothing! lol. Also, I can see my products via specific searches on Google so I am not hidden from google.  I know another person said some of theirs shows up and some of it doesn't so maybe there is something going on, but I don't think it is related to the no index thing.  

[Marcia]

Yeah, me, too. I googled my store & it came up in search. I also googled a few of my decently selling products last week to see if they were still showing up in google search. One wasn't but the rest of them were. So hopefully we're still being seen?

[JimCarnicelli]

"That makes me feel confident that it is not an issue that is preventing our product from being seen."

Google makes it clear that the Googlebot webcrawler does respect the no-index meta tag. This will affect the visibility of your content to people searching via Google.

Few large websites are fully indexed by Google. While Google is amazing, their webcrawlers can't visit every website every day looking for changes. They rely heavily on a site's sitemap to discover new content and changes. Because of technical limitations, Zazzle's sitemap could not possibly point to every product in every store. In fact I can tell you from studying their sitemap that they don't even point to every storefront page. Google doesn't rely only on a sitemap though. It still crawls from page to page following links to discover content. This is much slower. And when it comes across no-index meta tags it respects them.

Practically speaking Google's webcrawler will only sample a portion of a website on any given day and then come back a few days later to sample a little more of it.

BTW. If you're wondering how I know this stuff it's because I pay attention to this every day for Snuggle Hamster Designs. I've spent over a year optimizing the site for Google and continue to improve it each week as I discover new things. Note also that Zazzle has its own SEO team too. This matters a lot to them. And of course us.

[Malissa]

At least a good bit of my products are being seen in google and even the new ones I checked do not have a no index tag on the product page.  I'm not trying to dispute anything that you're saying.  None of that was in this thread when I posted so I wasn't contradicting anyone.  I just did the best I could with my own research being a non coding, non website building person trying to help find some answers.

 I am just saying from what I read this is something on certain types of pages.  Also, I am seeing  "no index, follow" which is part of what I was googling and I think that the follow part keeps the robots from being blocked to move onto the other pages it might link to and index those without indexing that page... I have no idea. 

(edited because I forgot to complete my thought🤣)

[SkullPilot]

Yep, it depends which page you investigate. I have three stores on the Z account I'm currently logged into. All have the 'noindex,follow' tag, and when I search on Google, two are not indexed and the other one is.

I used the search term:

site:zazzle.com inurl:skullpilot

That should show up any indexed page that has the format:

www.zazzle.com/store/skullpilot (or you use your own store name)

I don't know for sure, but I'm thinking Zazzle might not want Google to index the 'top level' Products page on our stores. But Googlebot is allowed to follow links on that Product page. So it'll crawl to the individual products and index those instead.

No idea if this is what Zazzle intended, or why - especially as one of mine shows up on google anyway. But the individual products do not seem to be noindex-tagged. They're fine (I think).

[SkullPilot]

Just to add:

I just inspected a couple of the Home pages and they do not appear to have the noindex tag, which is a bit concerning I suppose, because then they should show up using the inurl search I did.

So there's value sending people (and links) to the Store Homepage to help it appear in Google. But not any value sending traffic direct to the Product Page - since it's telling Google not to index it. Though any link 'authority' might be passed down to the single product pages. If 'link juice' is shared among all the links on the Product Page (which used to be the case - I haven't done much SEO stuff in the last few years, so things may have changed!)

[Malissa]

Also, in the first reply I made on this thread, I mentioned that from reading on it, I think it is something they are doing with "main" link pages and not individual pages.  A lot of websites do this on list type pages to cut down on duplicate links and such or to lessen the load of active links.  (from my very elementary understanding of this very confusing topic.  I am NOT a coder) The big question would be if that is the case EVERYONE across the board should be seeing this code on their main product page (the page under the products tab).  Otherwise this is not a satisfactory answer and it's either randomized or cherry picked via certain requirements.  

[JimCarnicelli]

"A lot of websites do this on list type pages to cut down on duplicate links and such or to lessen the load of active links."

This would be a bad idea. Google and other SEO sources have made clear that they highly value websites that have a lot of cross-linking within them. The worst kinds of websites for Google have just a super long list of pages that are disconnected from one another.

[Malissa]

I may not be describing what I read accurately or with proper wording and for the life of me I can not find exactly what I read.  I cleared my history since I did the google search- but I will tell you I distilled my information from a few things I read that weren't too technical for me to understand. I interpreted it to be like if you have a page that has a list of other pages on your site- like a table of contents type page- but you have other pages behind it that link to those pages as well, then you don't necessarily need to keep multiple list pages with the same information.  I really am not a coder and no website builder so I can't even explain properly and I can't find the passages I read to copy paste or link here so you can see why I think that is what they were saying. 

[MOM]

Here is a site (with great links to more info) which may make you feel a bit better. It explains the reason why those tags came to be including consequences of them depending on what you are doing (or not). To me it makes sense (although as a warning it’s not the newest right-up and rules constantly change as the Internet evolves so rapidly - especially nowadays where you have to fracture in AI in every thing. But take a look if you like: https://saradoesseo.com/seo-basics/follow-vs-nofollow-links/#:~:text=It's%2520the%2520Follow%2520lin... 

[Marcia]

@Malissa this is what I'm seeing on an imac, on chrome, for your page:

[Malissa]

That is the source code on the main home page of my store, but not the page under the products tab.  Switch to the products tab and you should be able to see it around line 135.  @Marcia   

[JimCarnicelli]

Yeah. The pattern I've seen is that our store home pages don't have the no-index meta tag. But our Store > Products pages do. And so do some of our products. Consensus among our Discord community is that sometime in June or July the new product detail pages started including this meta tag. Is it universal for new products? I don't know yet.

[Marcia]

But when I checked my store on Firefox, I get "no index". On Chrome, there's nothing there. So I wonder what that means?

My sales have dropped off probably 25% since last year a few months ago. I'd love to know what's going on.

[Marcia]

Yep, I see both yours & mine on the product page, in Chrome. On Firefox, it also shows up on the home page.

[JimCarnicelli]

@Marcia: Here's one of your newest products:

https://www.zazzle.com/sweet_16_gold_turquoise_watercolor_photo_modern_thank_you_card-25623863835209...

I viewed the source and found the no-index meta tag. BTW. I'd recommend searching for "robots" instead of "index". That term is used a lot in programming.

[Marcia]

@JimCarnicelli Ugh. But that makes sense if you noted that people on your discord thread were saying that their new products all had that "no index". I made that yesterday.

[Malissa]

I am not sure why I didn't think to do it from the beginning, but I just did a google search for Melrose Originals and my Zazzle store is the 3rd thing that comes up under my website and my IG page.  Search terms such as "whimsical art note card" bring up several of my Zazzle note cards on the first page of google.  Similar searches of t-shirts and phone cases show results in the first page as well.  I would bet that if you (in the collective people on this thread sense) do similar searches with terms very specific to your products you will find that you also show up in a Google search.  It's worth a try to find out and be assured that you are not, in fact, invisible.  

[CreativeLeahG]

I've done this, some do and some don't which I mentioned in an earlier post hence the confusion.

Meanwhile when I do very generic searches for invitations as an example, almost nothing for Zazzle (me or anyone else) shows up via the image organic search.

[Mark]

Hi all,

Thank you for your patience while the team looked into this.

Zazzle is an open marketplace where anyone can sign up and open a store. With new stores being opened every day, and stores potentially housing thousands of products each, it can be difficult for search engines to keep up with content on our website. As a result, we noindex particular store pages, but products in the stores would not be impacted and will remain available and searchable on our site. Google is also able to discover the stores and products when crawling Zazzle.com.

Thanks!

[CreativeLeahG]

Thank you for the update Mark

When you say

"No impact" on products: While you say "noindex" on the store page won't directly impact product indexing, it might indirectly affect it if the only way Google discovers the product is through the store page? Is this correct? Some users are noting not all their products appear on their store pages. Not sure if this is related.

Also how do you decide which stores to add this noindex tag to? Thanks

I'd rather not take a chance any only work on stores without it ... I think??

[JimCarnicelli]

Thanks for the update Mark. Some thoughts. It's stores' product listing pages. And it's individual product detail pages too. Here's one example:

https://www.zazzle.com/watercolor_couple_love_romance_wedding_anniversary_invitation-256252929140865...

Contains the meta tag:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow">

I'm seeing this on most of the stores and product pages I've looked at lately. I haven't looked at a lot. Just random here and there. But 100% of them have this meta tag.

I think I get what you're explaining. You're trying to reduce the number of pages that Google's webcrawler visits because the sheer volume is overwhelming their crawlers. They can't keep up. Is that right? This seems to imply that Zazzle is having to come up with a strategy to cut off some stores from Google indexing in order to keep Google indexing viable. Am I understanding correctly? Or is there something more to it?

We'd all appreciate more insight. Thank you.

Jim

[Marcia]

@JimCarnicelli how do you find the meta tag on the product or store url? Thanks!

[bkthompson]

Marcia - right click on the product page, click on "view page source," then search for "index" - if there is no-index you'll see it right away.

[Marcia]

@bkthompson thanks, but where on the product page do I click? The url? Anywhere on the page? I'm not seeing "view page source" at all, right clicking anywhere. I'm on an iMac. (Unless it's right in front of my face & somehow I'm just missing it...lol!)

[JimCarnicelli]

Assuming you're on a desktop/laptop you should be able to right-click just about anywhere on the page and get a context menu like this:

You should see "View page source" listed. You may also be able to press CTRL+U on your keyboard if you're using Windows like I am here.

[Marcia]

@JimCarnicelli Nope. At least I'm not going crazy! Using your example, this is what I'm getting:

[Marcia]

@JimCarnicelli Actually, nm the above post! I went on Chrome to edit a typo above, since I never can edit these posts on Safari, & it works there. Go figure! 

So anyone who's on Safari & wants to see this, use Chrome instead! 😳

[Dmargie-1029]

I use ipad

[JimCarnicelli]

This might help:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFu0h5sciUI

[JimCarnicelli]

A follow-up. We are discussing this on the Snuggle Hamster Designs Discord server. Members are reporting a pattern. It looks like products created before sometime in June don't have the no-index meta tag but products created afterward do. I suspect Zazzle's own page generator got changed somehow and is maybe accidentally snubbing new products.

[Marcia]

@JimCarnicelli Now I'm somewhat obsessed with this today. So the last 4 products I made a day or 2 ago are all "no index" but the dozen or so before them, which have been created in the last week or less, are all fine. I've been checking recent & best sellers and the far majority of them are ok. Any idea how Zazzle chooses which ones to shun? Or is that the million dollar question? lol

[Bepina]

How do you decide which stores are "awarded" with noindex? Is it permanent? And what's the point of spending so much time on tags, descriptions, cover images when we won't show in Google search results. I've tried googling a very specific product I have and it's nowhere to be found no matter how much words and phrases form description and tags I enter. It feels like Zazzle is punishing random creators.

[JimCarnicelli]

I have reread this several times because many of our SHD community members have asked me about it. And just now I finally realized the correct way of reading this statement: "we noindex particular store pages, but products in the stores would not be impacted and will remain available and searchable on our site". Mark isn't saying that your products are still searchable on Google. He's confirming that they are adding the meta tag that tells Google to bug off to many product pages. He's also saying that these product pages are still searchable from within Zazzle. Which of course isn't the same thing. So this statement is literally true. But probably confusing to some people.

That said, "Google is also able to discover the stores and products when crawling Zazzle.com" cannot be true if Zazzle is adding these no-index meta tags to our product pages.