We launched on Product Hunt – and got hit with a noindex, nofollow tag

This week, we launched Userbird on Product Hunt.

All seemed fine - until we noticed our launch page had a noindex, nofollow meta tag.

Google wasn’t indexing it. Neither was Ahrefs. No SEO benefit. No backlinks. Nothing.

It turns out, some products on ProductHunt effectively get shadow-banned at launch. Sure, you can see them, but their visibility is very limited. These products, to be best of my understanding, have the classification of live.

They'll never show up on Google, you'll never get any SEO benefits, and you can forget about being product of the week.

Did we do anything nefarious to get this gloried status?#

No- not as far as I'm aware. We did everything right; our offer is honest, we got a few real upvotes, I've never spammed the site or used it as a link building resource.

What about the products that are indexed?#

It seems like some products don't have this problem- they're visible to Google. It doesn't seem to correlate with upvotes or engagement, although I couldn't tell if it was related to the founders.

The one thing that distinguished the products that weren't invisible to Google was the featured status.

It seems like being featured is the only way to get your pages indexed.

How does one become 'Featured' on ProductHunt?#

ProductHunt say they feature:

• Digital Products: Our primary focus is on digital products and services.
• Live Products: We only feature products that are currently available.

What we look for in featured launches

• Useful: How practical and beneficial is the product for users?
• Novel: How innovative or unique is the product in its approach or solution?
• High Craft: How well-designed and delightful is the product to use?
• Creative: How fun, engaging, or imaginative is the product?

Source: https://help.producthunt.com/en/articles/9883485-product-hunt-featuring-guidelines

So the final conclusion, it's human-review, and quite subjective, and I guess this time Userbird didn't make the cut.

Rather than complain about it, of course, we'll try to improve our offering, and perhaps have a second launch in 6-12 months.

And lastly, I don't blame ProductHunt for doing this, I'm sure they get a ton of spam, and I'd probably do the same in their shoes.

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