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    4. How to stop google from indexing specific sections of a page?

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    How to stop google from indexing specific sections of a page?

    Technical SEO
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    • Iamfaramon
      Iamfaramon last edited by

      I'm currently trying to find a way to stop googlebot from indexing specific areas of a page, long ago Yahoo search created this tag class=”robots-nocontent” and I'm trying to see if there is a similar manner for google or if they have adopted the same tag?

      Any help would be much appreciated.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Dr-Pete
        Dr-Pete Staff last edited by

        Unfortunately, there is no officially sanctioned method for blocking just a portion of a page from the index. As others have mentioned, there are tricks that might do it, but their effectiveness is inconsistent, and most of them will run the risk that Google could treat it as a red flag of some sort. More often, the results just end up being unpredictable (especially with JavaScript) and end up causing additional grief for your developers and visitors.

        Most of the time, if you're dealing with substantial amounts of content you don't want indexed, I'd look for other solutions, such as grouping that content or making sure more of your content on any given page is unique. Unfortunately, that depends a lot on why you want it blocked, so it's hard to give a one-size-fits-all answer.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • tescokitchens
          tescokitchens last edited by

          We have just had a similar conundrum and plumped for the iframe option, sticking robots.txt on the iframe's source

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • 94501
            94501 last edited by

            I don't know this to be a fact, but I would not be surprised that if you could hide specific content on a page from Google, it would not be the best trust signal and could have it's own downside.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • KeriMorgret
              KeriMorgret @Iamfaramon last edited by

              Google is getting much better at reading javascript, however.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • Iamfaramon
                Iamfaramon @Chris.Menke last edited by

                I'm going to avoid iframes but the javascript does sound the best option so far, thank you!

                KeriMorgret 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • Chris.Menke
                  Chris.Menke last edited by

                  You might try Inserting your text into Javascript or maybe, inserting it into an Iframe.

                  Iamfaramon 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                  • chrissmithps
                    chrissmithps last edited by

                    ah ok looks like I still need to look into this further, if you do find anything I would love to hear how you can achieve it as I think it would be a useful technique to implement in some projects.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • Iamfaramon
                      Iamfaramon @chrissmithps last edited by

                      Ahhh unfortunately the googleon / off  tags is only in conjunction with Google search appliance, if that's changed though it would be incredibly useful.

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                      • chrissmithps
                        chrissmithps last edited by

                        Here is the article where this was taken from - http://perishablepress.com/tell-google-to-not-index-certain-parts-of-your-page/

                        Iamfaramon 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • chrissmithps
                          chrissmithps last edited by

                          This is a good question and something I haven't looked into. From articles I've read I think this may be what you are searching for.

                           <code>This is normal (X)HTML content that will be indexed by Google.
                          
                          This (X)HTML content will NOT be indexed by Google.</code> 
                          
                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
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