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noindex, nofollow option #6552

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ways2web opened this issue Oct 29, 2014 · 12 comments · Fixed by #14121
Closed

noindex, nofollow option #6552

ways2web opened this issue Oct 29, 2014 · 12 comments · Fixed by #14121
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c: New plugin For features that probably will not be added to Matomo, but could be implemented as plugins. Task Indicates an issue is neither a feature nor a bug and it's purely a "technical" change.
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@ways2web
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or an possibility to add own meta tags

@tsteur
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tsteur commented Oct 29, 2014

Maybe makes sense to set this by default anyway?

If not, maybe rather allow plugins to define meta tags and implement it as a plugin and publish it on the marketplace

@mattab
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mattab commented Nov 3, 2014

by default anonymous user has no access, so it should block search engines from finding the content
I don't think we want it in core as it's good to index the login pages of Piwik (for example they link to piwik.org)

+1 for doing it in a plugin

@mattab mattab closed this as completed Nov 3, 2014
@mattab mattab added the answered For when a question was asked and we referred to forum or answered it. label Nov 3, 2014
@tsteur
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tsteur commented Nov 4, 2014

So why closing this issue when we could build a plugin? I still think this is actually very useful for users.

@mattab mattab reopened this Nov 4, 2014
@mattab mattab added Task Indicates an issue is neither a feature nor a bug and it's purely a "technical" change. and removed answered For when a question was asked and we referred to forum or answered it. labels Nov 4, 2014
@mattab mattab added this to the Mid term milestone Nov 4, 2014
@mattab
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mattab commented Nov 4, 2014

@tsteur good point thanks for pointing out!

mattab added a commit that referenced this issue Nov 28, 2014
mnapoli added a commit that referenced this issue Dec 1, 2014
…he proxy as the referrer is checked ;)" after the merge
@ryrun
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ryrun commented Jun 3, 2015

Hi, this issue should be re-evaluated. See my post here: #8036 Its about preveting for googling for piwik installations.

@mattab mattab added the c: New plugin For features that probably will not be added to Matomo, but could be implemented as plugins. label Jun 5, 2015
@mattab
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mattab commented Jun 8, 2015

Increasing priority.

Proposed steps:

  • show <meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow"> on Installation pages, Updater pages, Reporting UI pages, Admin pages, and others if any
  • show <meta name="robots" content="index,follow"> on the Login form.

@hpvd
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hpvd commented Oct 28, 2015

just wanted comment on mattabs comment above:
"it's good to index the login pages of Piwik (for example they link to piwik.org)"

of course from seo point of view (backlinks) I could understand that.

From security point of view an easy to find login page is not that great.
One could e.g. easily do the following thing - FULLY AUTOMATED:

  1. search for login page
  2. start brute force attack
  3. when you are successful: look for ecommerce
  4. extract /download everything
  5. make a database of ecommerce data
  6. sell it to everyone (competitors)

on other systems their is a great effort to hide login page with the following:

  • of course for every visitor: noindex, no follow, no archive
  • have a possibility to easily change login url within the backend

so I would strongly vote for noindex, no follow, no archive also for login page

@AramVK
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AramVK commented May 21, 2018

I wonder why it still has index,follow on the login page. Every update I have to change it. If I don't, the page will end up high in the search result for our company name. This is obviously not something anyone wants. The meta tag is for controlling search engines; why would a search engine needs to display a login page for admins?

@schneidr
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I fully agree with AramVK, I don't want the stats page show up between my top search results. My workaround for now:

I created a general file norobots.txt outside of the document root:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Then I added to the VirtualHost in Apache:

Alias /robots.txt /path/to/norobots.txt

Voila, the site is ignored by search engines and I don't have to change anything after an update.

@wishsimply
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This was also my solution until I recently got a warning from google search console
'Indexed, though blocked by robots.txt'

Related 'learn more' link will lead to
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7440203#indexed_though_blocked_by_robots_txt,
which says that

'robots.txt is not the correct mechanism to avoid being indexed.'

After that I looked bit more and found
https://forum.matomo.org/t/exclude-piwik-from-being-indexed-by-search-engines/363/8 ,which will instruct modifying file '/plugins/Login/templates/login.twig'

from

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

to
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow">

Hopefully it works, but naturally it goes broken again after next update..

@AramVK
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AramVK commented Nov 21, 2018

Yes you need to be careful with robots.txt and Disallow /, if you don't place it at the right path, it will block your whole website.

After yesterdays update I had to update the login.twig file once again, it's still part of the routine 😌

@wishsimply
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yes, although (just for sure) that was not my case. I was only blocking /piwik directory, but google had found it anyway.

I commented also the other related issue and asked if this could be included to the project.

I guess that one checkbox in the settings would not be too much asked.

mattab added a commit that referenced this issue Nov 25, 2020
According to one user, this has helped worked around the issues with the google ads submission. 
Similar to #6552 #15273 but as a robots.txt file as well as the meta tags.
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8 participants