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There are a variety of ways in which Wikipedia attempts tocontrol search engine indexing, commonly termed "noindexing" on Wikipedia. The default behavior is that articles older than 90 days are indexed. All of the methods rely on using thenoindexHTMLmeta tag, which tellssearch engines not to index certain pages. Respecting the tag, especially in terms of removing already indexed content, is up to the individual search engine, and in theory the tag may be ignored entirely.
The control methods are:
__NOINDEX__
magic word into them, either directly or using the{{NOINDEX}} template, however articles are a special case, see§ Indexing of articles ("mainspace").__NOINDEX__
magic word into standard templates used in certain situations (same caveat as in the third point).Namespace | Status | Indexed | Can be overridden |
---|---|---|---|
(main) | newer than 90 days, unpatrolled | No | No |
newer than 90 days, patrolled | Yes | Yes | |
older than 90 days | Yes | No | |
User: | newer than 90 days, unpatrolled | No | No |
newer than 90 days, patrolled | No | Yes | |
older than 90 days | No | Yes | |
User talk: | n/a | No | Yes |
Draft: | No | No | |
Draft talk: | No | No | |
All others | Yes | Yes |
Articles older than 90 days are automatically indexed.[1] The__NOINDEX__
magic word and the{{NOINDEX}} template do not work on them. Articles younger than 90 days are not indexed, unless they have beenpatrolled and do not have the__NOINDEX__
magic word or the{{NOINDEX}} template on them (or a template that transcludes the{{NOINDEX}} template, such as the speedy deletion templates).[2][3][4] Note that &action=info will incorrectly state that they are indexed.[5] Articles that include the{{NOINDEX}} template are listed atCategory:Noindexed articles.
This patrolling may be done automatically by the software, as in the case of articles created by editors with theautopatrolled user right, or by another editor with thenew page reviewer user right (not to be confused with thepending changes reviewer user right).
On English Wikipedia the entireUser:
[6]namespace,User talk:
,Draft:
andDraft talk:
namespaces are automatically noindexed via a software setting.[7]
At the same time,__NOINDEX__
and__INDEX__
are disabled, in addition toarticle space, on theDraft namespace, and the Draft talk namespace; they have no effect there.[8]
MediaWiki:Robots.txt forbids analytic tools from visiting sensitive or potentially sensitive types of pages, primarily in the Wikipedia namespace – for exampledeletion debates. A side effect of not visiting is normally that a page cannot be indexed. Where possible, you should in addition use__NOINDEX__
for those pages.
Individual pages can be noindexed by adding the__NOINDEX__
magic word into that page, either directly or using the{{NOINDEX}} template. As explained above, this magic word doesn't work in mainspace (on articles).
Pages with the keyword are listed inCategory:Noindexed pages.[9]
Some standard templates include the__NOINDEX__
keyword, thereby noindexing pages to which the templates are applied. Such templates should be listed inCategory:Wikipedia templates which apply NOINDEX.
The templates{{BLP}} and{{BLP others}} include the{{NOINDEX}} parameter. The{{BLP}} template is added automatically by the{{WikiProject banner shell}} talkpage template, if given the parameter|blp=yes
; see the documentation of that template for more details. Pages using these templates are automatically categorised inCategory:Biography articles of living people.
These templates include{{NOINDEX}}:
See alsoCategory:Wikipedia templates which apply NOINDEX.
Individual pages can override namespace noindexing by adding the__INDEX__
magic word into that page, either directly or using the{{INDEX}} template. Such pages appear inCategory:Indexed pages. However, INDEX doesnot override noindexing viaMediaWiki:Robots.txt.[10] As explained above, this magic word doesn't work in mainspace (on articles).
The ability to add the INDEX magic word to user spaces (User:, User talk:) has been restricted byan edit filter toextended confirmed users following a community discussion.[11]
Since 2007, all links to other websites from English Wikipedia have thenofollow HTML attribute set.[12] This means that on pages that are indexed by search engines, any links found by a search engine on those pages should not influence the link target's ranking in the search engine's index.