Block Googlebot from submit button
-
Hi,
I have a website where many searches are made by the googlebot on our internal engine. We can make noindex on result page, but we want to stop the bot to call the ajax search button - GET form (because it pass a request to an external API with associate fees).
So, we want to stop crawling the form button, without noindex the search page itself. The "nofollow" tag don't seems to apply on button's submit.
Any suggestion?
-
Hey Olivier,
You could detect the user agent and hide the button. The difference isn't substantial enough to be called cloaking.
Or you could make the button not actually a button tag, but another tag with that traps clicks with a JS event. I'm not sure Google's headless browser is smart enough to automate that. I would try this first and if it doesn't work switch to the user agent detection idea.
Let us know how it goes!
-Mike
-
-
Can always do it in a programme the bot's can't use or hide it behind a log in field etc.
I also give you the following for consumption :
http://moz.com/blog/12-ways-to-keep-your-content-hidden-from-the-search-engines
Good luck!
-
Hi Bernard
Are you able to provide a link to the web form containing the submit button?
Peter
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Robots.txt Blocking - Best Practices
Hi All, We have a web provider who's not willing to remove the wildcard line of code blocking all agents from crawling our client's site (user-agent: *, Disallow: /). They have other lines allowing certain bots to crawl the site but we're wondering if they're missing out on organic traffic by having this main blocking line. It's also a pain because we're unable to set up Moz Pro, potentially because of this first line. We've researched and haven't found a ton of best practices regarding blocking all bots, then allowing certain ones. What do you think is a best practice for these files? Thanks! User-agent: * Disallow: / User-agent: Googlebot Disallow: Crawl-delay: 5 User-agent: Yahoo-slurp Disallow: User-agent: bingbot Disallow: User-agent: rogerbot Disallow: User-agent: * Crawl-delay: 5 Disallow: /new_vehicle_detail.asp Disallow: /new_vehicle_compare.asp Disallow: /news_article.asp Disallow: /new_model_detail_print.asp Disallow: /used_bikes/ Disallow: /default.asp?page=xCompareModels Disallow: /fiche_section_detail.asp
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ReunionMarketing0 -
Why would our server return a 301 status code when Googlebot visits from one IP, but a 200 from a different IP?
I have begun a daily process of analyzing a site's Web server log files and have noticed something that seems odd. There are several IP addresses from which Googlebot crawls that our server returns a 301 status code for every request, consistently, day after day. In nearly all cases, these are not URLs that should 301. When Googlebot visits from other IP addresses, the exact same pages are returned with a 200 status code. Is this normal? If so, why? If not, why not? I am concerned that our server returning an inaccurate status code is interfering with the site being effectively crawled as quickly and as often as it might be if this weren't happening. Thanks guys!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | danatanseo0 -
I have two sitemaps which partly duplicate - one is blocked by robots.txt but can't figure out why!
Hi, I've just found two sitemaps - one of them is .php and represents part of the site structure on the website. The second is a .txt file which lists every page on the website. The .txt file is blocked via robots exclusion protocol (which doesn't appear to be very logical as it's the only full sitemap). Any ideas why a developer might have done that?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
What's better ...more or less linking C-blocks?
I'm a little confused about c-blocks, I've been reading about them but I still don't get it. Are these similar to sitewide links? do they have to come from websites that I own and hosted in the same ip? and finally, what's better ...more or less linking c-blocks? Cheers 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mbulox0 -
Should I block temporary pages
I need some SEO advice on an odd scenario: We are launching a new product line (party supplies) on it's own domain (PartySuperCenter.com). Due to some internal/technical reasons we will not be able to launch the site until the summer. We already have the product in our warehouse so the owners want to created a section on our current site (CostumeSuperCenter.com) for the new products. Once the new site is up the product will be removed from our current site and moved to the new site. I am concerned about the effect this will have on our SEO - having thousands of product pages appear and then disappear after a few months. I was thinking about blocking the pages using the "noindex" tag. Is this how you would handle it? Thanks in advance for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | costume0 -
Backlinks from one website to my 3 websites (hosted in 1 c-block) ?
We are making some linkbuilding. And have very nice backlinks offer. So we are planning to put our 3 websites in it. Our 3 websites are on separate IP, but same C-block. Can it be a red flag for google? Can i put my 3 backlinks in one blog post?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bele0 -
Block an entire subdomain with robots.txt?
Is it possible to block an entire subdomain with robots.txt? I write for a blog that has their root domain as well as a subdomain pointing to the exact same IP. Getting rid of the option is not an option so I'd like to explore other options to avoid duplicate content. Any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kylesuss12 -
10,000 New Pages of New Content - Should I Block in Robots.txt?
I'm almost ready to launch a redesign of a client's website. The new site has over 10,000 new product pages, which contain unique product descriptions, but do feature some similar text to other products throughout the site. An example of the page similarities would be the following two products: Brown leather 2 seat sofa Brown leather 4 seat corner sofa Obviously, the products are different, but the pages feature very similar terms and phrases. I'm worried that the Panda update will mean that these pages are sand-boxed and/or penalised. Would you block the new pages? Add them gradually? What would you recommend in this situation?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cmaddison0