noodp
and noydir
play a very important role in making/destroying reputation of your blog on the web. So, today we are going to tell you each and every little thing you need to know about noodp and noydir meta-tags. Why should we not use any of them? Basically, noodp
and noydir
are meta-tags used in header files that instruct search engines how to handle your website data listed in Yahoo! Directory and DMOZ Directory/Open Directory Project. These tags tells search engines whether to include your website data listed in Yahoo! Directory and DMOZ Directory in the search results pages or not.
What are noodp and noydir tags in SEO:-
What is noodp meta-tag:-
First of all we will discuss about noodp or No Open Directory Project. You can say that DMOZ is an open content directory which contains links of all the websites in its database. Suppose, your website is listed in DMOZ Directory/Open Directory Project. Then, Google may use title tags and description of pages/posts of your website from DMOZ Directory instead of using title and description provided by you when ranking in search results. Still confused? For instance, suppose user types the query “How to make money online” in Google search page. Google will began to search appropriate results it its database. Suppose, you also have a page/post related to this query and they selected your post/page to be ranked in the search result page. So, instead of using title and description provided by you for that post/page, Google may use title and description from DMOZ Directory. This is why we use noodp meta-tag. In order to stop search engines from using DMOZ Directory data for your website, you can include noodp meta-tag in header file. This will instruct search engine to use your title and description.
Google engineer, Matt Cutts mentioned that it may take 3 to 4 days for your noodp meta-tag to update after Google crawled your page. Unfortunately, the DMOZ listings can often use outdated, inaccurate or not very well written data of your website resulting in bad user experience. That’s why this is recommended to use noodp meta-tag.
What is noydir meta-tag:-
Second meta-tag is noydir or No Yahoo Directory. When your site is listed in Yahoo! Directory, there is a title and description associated with it. noydir is used to prevent search engines from displaying your Yahoo! Directory title and description in the search results. All the criteria for noydir also is the same as described above, only difference is that noydir is only for Yahoo! Search engine. Yahoo!’s search spider called “Slurp” will use Yahoo! Directory to include your title and description in search result page. Hence, in order to prevent slurp from indexing your Yahoo! Directory data in search results, you can add noydir in your header file.
Prevent Search Engines from using website data from DMOZ Directory and Yahoo! Directory:-
There are two methods to prevent search engines from listing DMOZ Directory or Yahoo! Directory data.
1. Using WORDPRESS SEO by Yoast!
If your blog is hosted on WordPress then you can Install and Activate WordPress SEO by Yoast! Plugin. This is most powerful plugin everyone should use on his blog to boost SEO. Using this plugin you will get all kinds of fruits within one basket.
You can head over to Dashboard> SEO> Title & Metas section> Click on Other tab.
Here check both last options of enabling noodp and noydir meta-tags. All Done! Click Save.
2. Adding noodp and noydir to Header File Manully:-
Some user use more complicated methods to run blogs. If you want to add noodp and noydir meta-tags to your header file manually. So, if you are one, add below listed meta-tags in header file of your blog.
Meta-tags:-
- To avoid Google only from listing:
<meta name=”googlebot” content=”NOODP” />
- To avoid Yahoo! only, you can use this:
<meta name=”slurp” content=”NOYDIR” />
- To avoid MSN only, you can use this:
<meta name=”msnbot” content=”NOODP” />
If you want to avoid all search engines from listing your website data from these Open Directory Projects (DMOZ and Yahoo!) then you can use a single meta-tag for all search engines at once:
- <meta name=”robots” content=”NOODP,NOYDIR” />
i. For WordPress Users:-
Go to Dashboard> Appearance> Editor> Look for header.php file in right side. Open it.
Add your preferred meta-tag in <head> section just after <head> tag. See screenshot below:-
Click save.
ii. For Blogger Users:-
Go to Blogger Dashboard> Click on Template> Edit HTML.
Add your preferred meta-tag in <head> section just after <head> tag. See screenshot below:-
This tag includes both noodp and noydir meta-tags. Hence, instructing all search engines at once to not to include data. Disabling search engines for this activity ensures that they will not include outdated and inaccurate data from Directories. These Directories updates their database very rarely. These tags are as important as using robots.txt and Sitemap files for your website. If you still have any issue, feel free to ask. I’m ready to speak with you. Thanks!
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