No-Index is a directive sent to search engines to tell them not to index and display a specific page in their search engine results. It is a powerful tool that can be used to ensure that pages are not visible to the public and are not taken into consideration by search engines when they are ranking pages. This is especially important for webmasters and SEO professionals who want to make sure that their pages are not competing for rankings with other pages.
The main benefit of using No-Index is that it prevents pages from appearing in search engine results and competing for rankings. This allows webmasters and SEO specialists to control which pages are visible to the public and which ones are not. Additionally, using No-Index can help protect sensitive information, such as login pages, from appearing in search results.
No-Index does not prevent a web page from being crawled by search engines. When a page is crawled, search engines collect information about the page, including the page’s content and links. This information is used to determine which pages are relevant and should be ranked in search engine results. However, if a page is No-Indexed, the page will not appear in the search engine results.
No-Index can also be used to prevent pages from being canonicalized. Canonicalization is the process of assigning one version of a page as the canonical version and all other versions of the page as derivatives. This helps to ensure that the most up-to-date version of a page is displayed in the search engine results. If a page is No-Indexed, it cannot be designated as the canonical version and, therefore, will not be displayed in search engine results.
No-Index can also be used to help prevent duplicate content issues. If duplicate versions of a page exist, search engines may penalize the website for having duplicate content. By using No-Index, webmasters can tell search engines to ignore the duplicate versions of the page and only index the original version.