Settings For "Custom Robots Tags" Inside Post Editor

custom robots tags in bloggerBlogger just added Custom robots header tags to post editor. One of the features of search preferences was robots.txt and Robots tags which could be set only for homepage, archives, posts and pages. But now you can edit these settings even for individual posts and pages right from BlogSpot post editor. Unlike Meta Description, Custom Robots Header tags are not visible and are not shown if you try to check  it by viewing the browser source file for your blog. You will only see Meta Description if you have added the dynamic code. We will learn today where are robots tags added in your templates and how can you view them. Lets first find and locate these Robots header tags.

 

 

Why Can't You See Robots Tags?

If you have applied custom robots flags by following the tutorial for Search Preferences, then you would have observed that you don't see any flag appearing when you view the source file of your blog. This is because that these flags can be seen only in the HTTP header fields. Google now accepts robots tags which are directly added to the Headers of the HTML Page. To keep things simple, do this:

  1. After applying custom robots flags and activating it, visit your blog in Chrome
  2. In chrome go to this path: Tools > Developer Tools > Networks     (In Firefox it is : Tools > Web Developers > Web Console > Net )
  3. You will see several column fields as shown in the image below:

developers tools

   4. At the top-left you will find URL of your blog. If you don't see any data then simply refresh your blog without closing the Developers Tools window, you will find information appearing.

   5. Click your blog URL and you will see  two sections at your right. Request Headers and Response Headers.

    x-robots-tag for blogger

    6.   Under the Response Headers you will see an X-Robots-Tag header tag. This tag resembles the flags that you had set for your homepage. In my case I have set the custom robots tags for your homepage as All and noodp therefore it is appearing as X-Robots-Tag: all,noodp

The tags for archives,search pages, posts and pages should look similar to the above one but for some reasons I could locate the tags for homepage alone.

Settings For Custom Robots Tags Headers

To see header tags in post header you must first activate the custom headers. If you have not yet activated then follow these steps. Go to Settings | Search Preferences, click Edit next to "Custom robots header tags," and select Yes. Activated Successfully!

Now you must learn when should you use them. Using them correctly can help you rank better and using them at wrong scenarios can surely play the opposite.

Tag Meaning
all There are no restrictions for indexing or serving. This is default for all pages
noindex Do not show this page in search results and do not show a "Cached" link in search results.
nofollow Do not follow the links on this page
none Equivalent to noindex, nofollow
noarchive Do not show a "Cached" link in search results.
nosnippet Do not show a snippet in the search results for this page
noodp Do not use metadata from the Open Directory project (DMOZ) for titles or snippets shown for this page.
notranslate Do not offer translation of this page in other languages in search results.
noimageindex Do not index images on this page.
unavailable_after: [RFC-850 date/time] Do not show this page in search results after the specified date/time. The date/time must be specified in the RFC 850 format. Example: 17 May 2012 15:00:00 PST

The only tags which you should focus on are noimageindex, noindex and nofollow. Rest are just not required for a small scale blog. All of these tags are useful when you have a corporate blog or website with thousands of pages or even millions of pages. They help to control how search engines may crawl your content.

When to use noimageindex ?

If you are sharing personal or family pictures on any of your posts or page then may be you would prefer not to make those pictures public and keep them limited to readers reach only. In such case you may check this option and robots will be directed not to index the pics or images used inside the post.

When to use noindex?

Any page or post that you want to hide from robots and visitors can be tagged as noindex. Visitors wont be able to discover that page via search engines or may be even with the Google Custom Search Engine.

You can even noindex post or pages that you think will effect your search ranking. Google Panda Effects all those blogs which publishes low quality content. If you feel any of your post is just for entertainment purpose and does not relate to your niche then you can simply choose the noindex option from Header Tags.

When to use nofollow?

If you are creating a useful directory of 100 or more links that all point to some external websites and you don't want to pass your PageRank juice to them then you can choose the nofollow header tag.

If you are looking for when to nofollow links then read this tutorial:

Need Help?

There was too much of SEO tutorials this week and I am sure you guys would prefer a slight twist in topics. Therefore I would try to release some new plugins and widgets to make sure you enjoy different flavors of blogging.

Don't hesitate to post your queries. I am surely lazy at replying but I surely reply back. Peace and blessings buddies! :)

If you don't want to get yourself into Serious Technical Trouble while editing your Blog Template then just sit back and relax and let us do the Job for you at a fairly reasonable cost. Submit your order details by Clicking Here »

25 comments

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  1. Bro one question in my mind " Should we add NOFOLLOW to Image Links ? "
    I saw in post editor there is now option to auto add NOFOLLOW to the links of images as they are the links of.blogspot.com and we no need to mark is as dofollow. so tell me am i ok that we should add nofollow to images link or i m wrong ?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hmmm Really Good Post Sir Will Surely Remove Miss Conception Really Nice post.Thanks.Just Waiting For Your Post Even Tomorrow Is my Paper In College Thanks No Got To Study...Syed Faizan Ali Recently Posted http://www.mybloggerlab.com/2012/04/top-5-plugins-to-maximize-your.html

    ReplyDelete
  3. @afridi Bhai

    The rel="nofollow" attribute is for the link, what is specified in the href attribute.

    It doesn't matter if the anchor is text or an image, the link itself is the same and given in ...

    you can add rel nofollow by using html editor of blogger

    ReplyDelete
  4. It will be appreciated if you just make a single post and give all links to your posts for the actions which needs to be undertaken in view of Blogger getting dynamic which will give wordpress a stiff competition.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Dear Mohammad
    this is a nice tutorial. I applied step by step but I am getting error " status code: 304 not modified " in developer console. I have already activated header tags successfully.
    Can you please help me? what is wrong.

    ReplyDelete
  6. You are a genius bro.......
    Superb work !!!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Thanx for the great tutorial.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Sir Mohammad I got a problem with my sitemap page that I got from your tutorial.I got a message from google advice with abufarhan.com that hosted a malware.I pasted the advice from google below

    Safe Browsing
    Diagnostic page for abu-farhan.com

    What is the current listing status for abu-farhan.com?
    Sites listed as suspicious - visiting this web site may harm your computer.

    Listed for suspicious activity part of this site for 17 (more) times during the past 90 days.

    What happened when Google visited this site?
    173 (that) we tried this page on the site during the past 90 days, resulting in 34 (that) page on downloading and installing software nakakapanghamak without the consent of the user. The last time Google visited this site was on 2012-04-03, and the last chance to find any questionable content on this site was on 2012-04-03.
    Among the 278 nakakapanghamak software exploit (s), 29 trojan (s), 15 scripting exploit (s). Resulted in the successful infected on average 7 (to) new processes on the target machine.

    Hosted software nakakapanghamak 1 (to) domain, including ibiz.cc / .

    This site is hosted in a (to) network including AS26347 (DreamHost) .

    Does the site act as intermediary resulting in further sharing of malware?
    During the past 90 days, appeared to act as mediator, abu farhan.com infected for 33 (more) sites including el-vonix.blogspot.com / , radiotvindonesia.blogspot.com / , lagospodinaevelina. blogspot.com / .

    I attended the site hosting this malware?
    Yes, previously hosted this site nakakapanghamak software during the past 90 days. That infected its 0 (that) domains, including.

    How did it happen?
    In some cases, can add third party nakakapanghamak code to legitimate sites, which may cause our display of warning messages.

    The next step:
    Return to previous page.
    If you are the owner of this web site, you can request a review of your site with Webmaster Tools for Google. More information available about the process of examining the Webmaster Help Center .

    ReplyDelete
  9. Just give an advice sir regarding with this what happen with abufarhan.And how to solve this problem

    ReplyDelete
  10. Thanks bro..
    My site techgratis.com

    ReplyDelete
  11. Yes, I has been use this trick and tips in my blog..

    ReplyDelete
  12. Online Earning In Bangladesh- Forex Trading

    ReplyDelete
  13. relay Nice! brother U allays rock some times i am passing lot of problems now i got good site like you site nice information provide for blogger thanquuuuuuuuuuu

    ReplyDelete
  14. how to configure best robot.txt file.
    i am currently using like :
    User-agent: *
    Disallow:

    is it good for search engine??? please help me???

    ReplyDelete
  15. brother Mustafa......thanks for this post a very big help.......
    will you please tell me how should I use "noodp" tag....
    thank you

    ReplyDelete
  16. Thank you very much for this article. You cleared up a lot of confusion. Keep up the good work.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Thanx for the great tutorial.

    ReplyDelete
  18. thanks for clearing my doubts.

    ReplyDelete
  19. thank you MBT !
    with much love

    Adu Alex.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Awesome article that help us to improve SEO.

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  21. Well thanks very much all I was facing problems in Seo were due to this bad mistake but after changing the settings I got all mistakes solved for my site TutorialsHunt.com :) Thanks ;)

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  22. bro which custom tag is used, i only want to increase visitors of my website

    ReplyDelete