How to make Category Links noindex

Question

Is there a way to make all my categories to be "noindex"? (Plugin or even better default joomla way)

Right now crawlers find the category URLs and thus create duplicate content on search engines.

Would be great to have one central config for all categories.

Answer 1

Having the same problem I went down to the database.

with this SQL you can update ALL categories to noindex and to nofollow for search engines (google, bing, yandex)

UPDATE `jos_categories` SET `metadata`='{"author":"","robots":"noindex, nofollow"}' WHERE `extension`='com_content'

you need to find out your table prefix, in the above example jos_ is the default prefix of joomla. If your table prefix is xzhw_ of course your SQL would be

UPDATE `xzhw_categories` SET `metadata`='{"author":"","robots":"noindex, nofollow"}' WHERE `extension`='com_content'

be careful

if you use categories for displaying other content in e.g. a category blog, DO NOT USE THE SQL. Instead you should eiher select your categories in the WHERE clause or even better you go manually through the categories in the backend of joomla and you edit under Publish-tab the Robots to noindex, nofollow

Answer 2

You can walk through all categories, and in the Publishing tab, set the Robots option to No Index.