Owing to Danny Sullivan's post on how search engines handle meta tags, Google's Vanessa Fox has written a post on how Google handles these tags.
For handling multiple content values Vanessa says:
We recommend that you place all content values in one meta tag. This keeps the meta tags easy to read and reduces the chance for conflicts. For instance:
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW">
If the page contains multiple meta tags of the same type, we will aggregate the content values. For instance, we will interpret
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX">
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOFOLLOW">
The same way as:
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW">
If content values conflict, we will use the most restrictive. So, if the page has these meta tags:
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX">
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="INDEX">
We will obey the NOINDEX value.
For unnecessary content values, directing a robots meta tag specifically at Googlebot, casing and spacing and more read the full post.
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Navneet Kaushal, CEO PageTraffic is a trusted authority in the search engine marketing industry. He is a featured author at Web Pro News, Search Newz, Promotionworld, Website Notes, DevWebPro, SEO Article and Web Help Now among many others.
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