Dumb SEO Questions

(Entry was posted by Tony McCreath on this post in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 08/22/2014).

Should a Privacy Policy be noindexed?

Should a Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions be noindexed?

These may be used as quality signals so would noindexing them remove that signal??
This question begins at 00:13:03 into the clip. Did this video clip play correctly? Watch this question on YouTube commencing at 00:13:03
Video would not load
I see YouTube error message
I see static
Video clip did not start at this question

YOUR ANSWERS

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

  • Tony McCreath: Should a Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions be noindexed?

    These may be used as quality signals so would noindexing them remove that signal?
  • Martino Mosna: I wouldn't bother about that.
  • Rahul Chauhan: there is no need to add noindex to them, all you have to do is just make sure that these are not copied.
  • Jon Tromans: I leave them as normal but I can't see it hurting or helping if they got noinexed. I highly doubt it would make much difference.
  • Tony McCreath: I tend to noindex as they have no value in the search results so only dilute a websites content with off topic info. But then I think Google  ;is clever enough to categoise these sorts of pages.
  • Martino Mosna: only duplicates truly needs a noindex. Privacy or legal pages are not an issue.
  • Martino Mosna: on the other hand: what if some lawyer finds out that you removed your privacy statement from search engine results? Hiding privacy & legal, albeit from search results only, is not a good idea form this point of view.
  • Edwin Jonk: From the expert panel in this weeks SEO Questions hangout on air on 00:13:03 into the YouTube video: https://dumbseoquestions.com/q/should_a_privacy_policy_be_noindexed +Tony McCreath

    The cuetimes listed on this page are functional while the live broadcast continues and also once Youtube has finished processing the public broadcast. Processing time varies between 6-24 hours. During this period the clip is viewable in full but the cuetimes cannot be relied on.

    If our assistance with this issue was useful to you, please consider sharing your success story so that others might benefit.
    
  • Tony McCreath: I like the idea of making them interesting.

    The no indexing was based on a concern that small websites with only a few pages would get their subject matter diluted with the off topic babble that these site wide linked pages have.

    I think Google classifies these pages well so my conclusion is to forget the noindex and trust Google (and other search engines).

    Maybe there should be a schema.org type for these web pages?
  • Jon Tromans: Thinking about it a bit more it wouldn't hurt to treat them like shopping checkout pages which I usually noindex...

View original question in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 08/22/2014).

All Questions in this Hangout