Scripsit Nikita the Spider:
I usually see them in the latter form. If you split them into two
separate tags, a poorly programmed robot might find the first tag and
never discover the second.
And this would mean... what? That it only recognizes the request that
all robots go away and skip the request "noodp", whatever that is
supposed to mean?
Does it matter? A robot that is poorly programmed in such an elementary
issue can hardly be expected to behave, whatever you tell it.
Besides, the tag <META name="robots" content="NOINDEX"> complies with
the so-called Robots Exclusion Standard and is thus recognized by _all_
decently behaving robots, by definition. There is no other published
specification on <meta name="robots" - ->, so ignoring <META
name="robots" content="NOINDEX,noodp"> would not be specifically wrong,
just clueless.
When you have a "standard" tag that tells _all_ robots to refrain from
indexing the page, there is no point in trying to modify the tag or
another tag to tell some specific robots not to index it.
Besides, for the most of it, telling robots to stay away is probably
counter-productive more often than useful. A well-behaving robots is
usually your friend, and a misbehaving robot just won't listen to your
commands (and might even do just the opposite of what you say).
