noindex

[RogerHaraldsson]

Do you recommend to apply noindex to Categories, Formats, Case studies Categories and page categories?

[sybrew]

Hello!

If you don't want search engine users to find pages, tags, categories, et al. via the search engine, then you should apply noindex to them.

If you believe that some content is duplicated (e.g., a tag and category show the same posts) and prefer one version over the other (e.g., you want tags to show up instead of categories), then you should apply noindex to tags.

Generally, duplicated content doesn't affect ranking, but when Google asserts that pages are duplicated, they'll index one over the other, often via discovered intent: "Which one is linked-to more?".

Having more content indexed doesn't affect ranking, either--only if the majority of the content is "bad" (like empty Media/attachment pages). However, having fewer pages indexed frees up the "crawling budget," allowing search engines to crawl your favorable pages more frequently and index new pages faster.

For more information, please see:

• (how?) https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/crawling-indexing/
• (why?) https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6062607
• (should?) https://www.searchenginejournal.com/noindex-category-archive-pages/374867/

I hope this helps you move forward :) Cheers!