Purpose: Request that a page is omitted from a search engine’s index/search results 

Usage: To exclude pages that are transactional such as terms and conditions or temporary such as competitions

Rationale: You don’t want to have a search engine list pages that are not for marketing as these may negatively impact the ranking of your marketing pages. You don’t want search engines to list pages that may soon be removed such as campaigns or competitions as that will lead to your site being associated with errors which is bad for ranking

As a general rule you should leave the first checked and the second unchecked

Purpose: Request that a page is included in your site’s sitemap 

Usage: To make the search engine aware of pages that are important and increase their chances of being indexed

Rationale: You want the search engine to know about your important pages and be informed each time they are modified. You don’t want to include pages that may soon be removed such as campaigns or competitions as that will lead to your site being associated with errors which is bad for ranking

Purpose: To not pass / pass the SEO value of a page on which a click takes place to the destination page 

Usage: Search engines consider inbound links to a page in ranking. Links from a high SEO page can confer value to another page

Rationale: As a general rule you should leave it checked

Purpose: Makes the page a candidate to be displayed in the MyIreland feed 

Usage: To include high value pages in the feed and exclude pages that are transactional such as terms and conditions

Rationale: You want your best content to have the maximum chance of being seen therefore include in the MyIreland feed. You may check this option on temporary pages such as campaigns or competitions but it’s good practice to untick again when these end

Purpose: Request that a page is included in your site’s search results 

Usage: To include high value pages in the search results and exclude pages that are transactional such as terms and conditions

Rationale: You want the search engine to know about your important pages and display as a result for a matching search. You may not want to include temporary or transactional in search results

Purpose: To indicate that a page should be in a featured card when displayed on other pages

Usage: To draw attention to the most important page in any site area such as a hub page

Rationale: You want the key page for any area to get a large card in a featured card area and be the featured result in search results, you should use sparingly