x-robots, invisible directives

A poorly known feature for search engines that can surprise webmasters because it doesn't appear in page content but has the same effect as a meta tag.

Because it became possible to put external links in nofollow completely imperceptibly, especially since it can even be selective and work only with robots from Google! Which, by the way, makes nofollow detection tools like the SeoQuake Firefox extension inoperative and misleading.

Nofollow

Recall that the nofollow attribute is ignoring a Google external link. You can add this attribute to a link tag:

<a href="xxxx" rel="nofollow">Lien</a>

It can also be applied to the entire page if it is labeled:

<meta name="robots" content="nofollow">

This tag is used for pages that are not indexed by search engines, such as registration forms, legal information, and others.

X-robots

This is precisely the importance of the X-Robots directive.

In PHP, she can write herself

header(’X-Robots-Tag: noindex, nofollow’, true);

And in the .htaccess file, this can be included in the rule:

Header set X-Robots-Tag "nofollow"

In both cases, the maneuver is completely undetectable to the user or the nofollow reporting software.

Consequences...

Sharing links to football or content allows sites to gain artificial popularity. Google could fine the site for doing so.

When exchanging links, the passed PageRank value is usually canceled if the links are numerous and mutual, but if one of the partners places links to another site in nofollow, it benefits.

Reason to stick to natural connections, which are really helpful to visitors because they add to the article.

Google announces support for X robots. In particular, the properties noindex, noive, nosnippets and availability period .

See also motor manual.