Can a Noindexed Page Regain Its Former Google Rankings?

If you have a page that has ranked well for a while, that you noindexed for whatever reason, would it be able to regain its previous rankings if you then removed the noindex from the page?

We have sometimes seen cases where some businesses (falsely) believe that noindexing a page is the best solution when a product goes out of stock, and then remove the noindex page when it is back in stock.  While we know Google will greatly reduce the crawl frequency on noindexed pages (so that it could be months before Googlebot checks again), can that noindexed page regain its former glory in the Google search results?

According to Gary Illyes from Google, it depends on just how long that page was noindexed for.

So it depends how much is “for a short time.”  If it’s just a matter of a few days then it’s very likely that the signals are still lingering around and you will jump and regain pretty much everything that you had.

If it’s, I don’t know, weeks or months, then you will pretty much start from the bottom.

He then confirms that you do lose benefit over time and that it decays.

I mean the links pointing to the site will still be there, or not the site, but the page will still be there.  But there are other signals that don’t stick around if we see that the URL doesn’t exist anymore.

So to say once again, a noindex is not the best solution for dealing with out of stock products, or for other issues where you might want to deindex a page but get it’s rankings back again in the future.

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Jennifer Slegg

Founder & Editor at The SEM Post

Jennifer Slegg is a longtime speaker and expert in search engine marketing, working in the industry for almost 20 years. When she isn't sitting at her desk writing and working, she can be found grabbing a latte at her local Starbucks or planning her next trip to Disneyland. She regularly speaks at Pubcon, SMX, State of Search, Brighton SEO and more, and has been presenting at conferences for over a decade.

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