FastStore: new experimental SEO flags for search engines

Added

May, 16

FastStore projects can now use new experimental flags to manage how search engines interact with and categorize store content:

Flag	Type	Description
`noRobots`	boolean	Disables the default `robots` meta tag on all pages, removing the default crawler instructions. Set to `true`: Prevents including any robots meta tags on the page. Set to `false`: Includes crawler instructions as the FastStore default behavior, allowing search engines to understand how to index and follow the site.
`noindex`	boolean	Instructs web crawlers not to index the store page, which keeps the page out of search results. Set to `true`: Indicates the page should not be indexed by search engines. Set to `false`: Allows search engines to include the page in their search results.
`nofollow`	Boolean	Prevents search engines from following links on the page to ensure that sensitive or irrelevant content is not included in search results. Set to `true`: Stops the page from passing SEO values to linked pages. Set to `false`: Allows search engines to crawl and potentially pass SEO values to linked pages.

These flags are experimental and may have limitations. Before using them in a production environment, run tests to make sure they are compatible with your store.

What needs to be done?

To use these flags, update your FastStore project and add them to the discovery.config.js file:

Open your store project in the code editor of your choice.
Open the terminal and run the following command to update the FastStore packages to the latest version:

_10yarn upgrade -L --scope @faststore
Open the discovery.config.js file and, under the experimental field, add the noRobots and noindex, or nofollow flags. The experimental field will look like this:

discovery.config.js
_10 _10experimental: { _10 … _10 noRobots: false, // Disables default robots meta tag if true _10 noindex: true, // Prevents indexing if true _10},
Run yarn dev in the terminal.
Open the available localhost URL and check if the flags are applied by inspecting the <head> element of the page or using SEO tools:

${"base64":" ","img":{"width":1918,"height":580,"type":"png","mime":"image/png","wUnits":"px","hUnits":"px","length":297561,"url":"https://vtexhelp.vtexassets.com/assets/docs/src/seo-flags___8e77083576529c49e160590a9229ed02.png"}}$