robots meta tag (no)follow/(no)index clarification please

Hi,

I continue to be confused by the robots meta tag. I wonder if someone would be kind enough to confirm whether my current setup (below) is correct.

In my view of the world, Zen Cart pages fall into five types:

Home page
Categories pages
Product pages accessed from Categories
Product pages accessed from elsewhere (what's new etc)
Other (non product as as contact us etc)

In my current setup (which I believe is the default) my robots meta tags are as follows:
Home page - none
Categories pages - none
Product pages accessed from Categories - none
Product pages accessed from elsewhere (what's new etc) - noindex, nofollow
Other (non product such as contact us etc) - noindex, nofollow

Can anyone please confirm that this setup is correct? I am getting odd results from Google and they may be for other reasons but I want to eliminate the robots meta tag from my enquiries. Thanks.

Earthenware:

I am getting odd results from Google
Such as?

I take it from the fact that you didn't query my current setup that it's correct. That's what I needed to know. Thanks.

Product pages accessed from elsewhere (what's new etc) - noindex, nofollow
No it's not correct, product pages should never contain a noindex tag

~Melanie

Even when the pages are accessed from places other than the category pages? Wouldn't this lead to duplicate content - i.e. the same content being indexed more than once with different URLs?

Isn't this the logic as defined in html_header.php, with the code...

<?php if (defined('ROBOTS_PAGES_TO_SKIP') && in_array($current_page_base,explode(",",constant('ROBOTS_PAGES_TO_SKIP'))) || $current_page_base=='down_for_maintenance' || $robotsNoIndex === true) { ?>
<meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow" />
<?php } ?>

...which I assumed had been included specifically to guard against duplicate content?

You assume incorrect =).... anyhow the rel="canonical" takes care of the duplication

You still didn't clarify what your "odd results from Google" are.