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I'm working on an audit for an ecommerce and their login, reset password, and register pages are indexable in google. Is it necessary to make them indexable in Google?

John Conde
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P082
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  • "necessary" for what purpose? SEO? Findable? – Steve Apr 23 '19 at 06:49
  • Hello Mate, I'm just asking. Because I don't think so, that they should be indexable. They should be Noindex nofollow. I don't think so, there is any relevancy these pages have with SEO – P082 Apr 23 '19 at 08:57

3 Answers3

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Whether or not your Login, Reset and Registration Pages are up to you.

If it has no commercial value, then you can nofollow those internal links and apply a noindex on them for good measure. You are making a business decision and choosing to eliminate that page from appearing in your sitelinks from what I would presume to be a top-level navigational page (i.e. every page links to the login, registration).

However, user interaction pages can be classified by a type of search intent called Navigational - someone using a search engine to navigate to a specific page. Further Reading. For example, Googling facebook login will yield https://en-gb.facebook.com/login/ as the top result.

This is because the best page to meet that specific search query and the intent is the log in page for Facebook.

There is also specific schema.org Item Types such as https://schema.org/RegisterAction that specifically refer to this user action. It may also be a useful signal to Google that your website involves interaction which will help classify the type of website and webpages it contains.

As long as these pages aren't spider traps that bleed crawl budget, I see no harm in including these pages in the SERPs.

inkovic
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    IMO the key takeaway from this answer is that people will search directly for your login page from search engines. If you decide not to index it, those people will need to take one extra click to be able to log in to your site. – Maximillian Laumeister Apr 23 '19 at 15:33
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It is situational. Any time people are going to google seeing the link to your website and clicking on the link to your website then going there and not bouncing, you are getting a slight boost in site value in the eyes of Google. So, if people are looking for your login page, register page and reset password pages, then go to and interact with those pages consistently, it is a good idea to make them indexable as they are useful to your users and they can help you to rank for heavily entrenched terms. Depending on your site structure, this can also become an organic site link which makes your organic result larger and leads to an increased ctr on other terms that make your website pop up organically.

On the flip side, if people don't use it / click it much it's likely to just sink to the bottom of the search results, it's not likely to do you much harm either. Generally speaking, Google will index and rank highly the things people click on and interact with. Most of the time you should try to index everything unless you have a specific reason not to (like crawl budget conservation).

Leonard Treman
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I wouldn't make them indexable. In fact I am using a session variable to ensure that they cant be linked to. The reason is - if they are easily accessible, then it invites the robots to discover them and have a good crack at them. The pages being -

  • register
  • login
  • reset password

I would make it an exception for login, if the primary purpose of the site requires a login. But definitely not the other two.

Rohit Gupta
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  • What do you mean by "have a good crack at them?" Are you suggesting that search engine bots might try to hack them? – Stephen Ostermiller Sep 18 '22 at 10:52
  • Malicious bots. – Rohit Gupta Sep 18 '22 at 11:04
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    I doubt malicious bots pay any attention to whether or not search engines are able to index something or not. – Stephen Ostermiller Sep 18 '22 at 13:22
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    I am not explaining myself I guess. If the links are made accessible (because they are searchable), then malicious bots will also find them. Not because Google has indexed them, but because they are findable. So I wouldnt have reset password operable, without having a session variable protection from the login page. – Rohit Gupta Sep 18 '22 at 22:56