What is the best way to stop a page being indexed?
-
What is the best way to stop a page being indexed? Is it to implement robots.txt at a site level with a Robots.txt file in the main directory or at a page level with the tag?
-
Thanks that's good to know!
-
To prevent all robots from indexing a page on your site, place the following meta tag into the section of your page:
To allow other robots to index the page on your site, preventing only a specific search engine bot, for example here Google's robots from indexing the page:
When Google see the noindex meta tag on a page, Google will completely drop the page from our search results, even if other pages link to it. Other search engines, however, may interpret this directive differently. As a result, a link to the page can still appear in their search results.
Note that because Google have to crawl your page in order to see the noindex meta tag, there's a small chance that Googlebot won't see and respect the noindex meta tag. If your page is still appearing in results, it's probably because Google haven't crawled your site since you added the tag. (Also, if you've used your robots.txt file to block this page, Google won't be able to see the tag either.)
If the content is currently in Google's index, it will remove it after the next time it crawl it. To expedite removal, use the Remove URLs tool in Google Webmaster Tools.
-
Thanks that's good to know.
-
"noindex" takes precedents over "index" so basicly if it says "noindex" anywhere google will follow that.
-
Thanks for the answers guys... Can I ask in the event that the Robots.txt file is implemented at the domain level but the mark up on the page is <meta name="robots" content="index, follow"> which one take wins?
-
Why not both? Some cases one method is preferred over another, or in fact necessary. As with non html documents such as pdf, you may have to use the robots.txt to keep it from being indexed or header tags as well. I'll also give you another option, and that is to password protect a directory.
-
Hi,
While the page-level robots meta tag is the best way to stop the page from being indexed, a domain-level robots.txt can save some bandwidth of the search engines. With robots.txt blocking in place, Google will not crawl the page from within the website but can pickup the URLs mentioned some where else on a third-party website. In cases like these, the page-level robots meta tag comes to the rescue. So, it would be best if the pages are blocked using robots.txt file as well as the page-level meta robots tag. Hope that helps.
Good luck friend.
Best regards,
Devanur Rafi
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
-
What's the best way for users to upload their images to my wordpress site to promote UGC
I have looked at lots of different plugins and wanted a recommendation for an easy way for patients of ours to upload pictures of them out partying and having fun and looking beautiful so future users can see the final results instead of sometimes gory or difficult to understand before and after images. I'd like to give them the opportunity to write captions (like facebook or insta posts and would offer them incentives to do so. I don't want it to be too complicated for them or have too many steps or barriers but I do want it to look nice and slick and modern. Also do you think this would have a positive impact on SEO? I was also thinking of a Q&A app where dentists could get Q&A emails and respond - i've been doing AMA sessions and they've been really successful and I would like to bring it into out site and make it native. Thanks in advance 🙂
Technical SEO | | Smileworks_Liverpool1 -
Stop Google indexing entire website based on search location
OK - bear with me... We have a .co.uk website. However, we only want it indexing in the US Google and NOT the UK Google. Is there a way of configuring this in Search Console /Webmaster tools?
Technical SEO | | AbsoluteDesign0 -
Redesigned and Migrated Website - Lost Almost All Organic Traffic - Mobile Pages Indexing over Normal Pages
We recently redesigned and migrated our site from www.jmacsupply.com to https://www.jmac.com It has been over 2 weeks since implementing 301 redirects, and we have lost over 90% of our organic traffic. Google seems to be indexing the mobile versions of our pages over our website pages. We hired a designer to redesign the site, and we are confident the code is doing something that is harmful for ranking our website. F or Example: If you google "KEEDEX-K-DS-FLX38" You should see our mobile page ranking: http://www.jmac.com/mobile/Product.aspx?ProductCode=KEEDEX-K-DS-FLX38 but the page that we want ranked (and we think should be, is https://www.jmac.com/Keedex_K_DS_FLX38_p/keedex-k-ds-flx38.htm) That second page isn't even indexed. (When you search for: "site:jmac.com Keedex K-DS-FLX38") We have implemented rel canonical, and rel alternate both ways. What are we doing wrong??? Thank you in advance for any help - it is much appreciated.
Technical SEO | | jmaccom0 -
Best way to noindex long dynamic urls?
I just got a Mozcrawl back and see lots of errors for overly dynamic urls. The site is a villa rental site that gives users the ability to search by bedroom, amenities, price, etc, so I'm wondering what the best way to keep these types of dynamically generated pages with urls like /property-search-page/?location=any&status=any&type=any&bedrooms=9&bathrooms=any&min-price=any&max-price=any from indexing. Any assistance will be greatly appreciated : )
Technical SEO | | wcbuckner0 -
De-indexing millions of pages - would this work?
Hi all, We run an e-commerce site with a catalogue of around 5 million products. Unfortunately, we have let Googlebot crawl and index tens of millions of search URLs, the majority of which are very thin of content or duplicates of other URLs. In short: we are in deep. Our bloated Google-index is hampering our real content to rank; Googlebot does not bother crawling our real content (product pages specifically) and hammers the life out of our servers. Since having Googlebot crawl and de-index tens of millions of old URLs would probably take years (?), my plan is this: 301 redirect all old SERP URLs to a new SERP URL. If new URL should not be indexed, add meta robots noindex tag on new URL. When it is evident that Google has indexed most "high quality" new URLs, robots.txt disallow crawling of old SERP URLs. Then directory style remove all old SERP URLs in GWT URL Removal Tool This would be an example of an old URL:
Technical SEO | | TalkInThePark
www.site.com/cgi-bin/weirdapplicationname.cgi?word=bmw&what=1.2&how=2 This would be an example of a new URL:
www.site.com/search?q=bmw&category=cars&color=blue I have to specific questions: Would Google both de-index the old URL and not index the new URL after 301 redirecting the old URL to the new URL (which is noindexed) as described in point 2 above? What risks are associated with removing tens of millions of URLs directory style in GWT URL Removal Tool? I have done this before but then I removed "only" some useless 50 000 "add to cart"-URLs.Google says themselves that you should not remove duplicate/thin content this way and that using this tool tools this way "may cause problems for your site". And yes, these tens of millions of SERP URLs is a result of a faceted navigation/search function let loose all to long.
And no, we cannot wait for Googlebot to crawl all these millions of URLs in order to discover the 301. By then we would be out of business. Best regards,
TalkInThePark0 -
Is there an easier way from the server to prevent duplicate page content?
I know that using either 301 or 302 will fix the problem of duplicate page content. My question would be; is there an easier way of preventing duplicate page content when it's an issue with the URL. For example: URL: http://example.com URL: http://www.example.com My guess would be like it says here, that it's a setting issue with the server. If anyone has some pointers on how to prevent this from occurring, it would be greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | brianhughes2 -
What is the best way to deal with pages whose content changes?
My site features businesses that offers activities for kids. Each business has its own page on my site. Business pages contains a listing of different activities that organization is putting on (such as events, summer camps, drop-in activities). Some businesses only offer seasonal activities (for example, during Christmas break and summer camps). The rest of the year, the business has no activities -- the page is empty. This is creating 2 problems. It's poor user experience (which I can fix no problem) but it also is thin content and sometimes treated as duplicate content. What's the best way to deal with pages whose content can be quite extensive at certain points of the year and shallow or empty at other parts? Should I include a meta ROBOTS tag to not index when there is no content, and change the tag to index when there is content? Should I just ignore this problem? Should I remove the page completely and do a redirect? Would love to know people's thoughts.
Technical SEO | | ChatterBlock0 -
Can I use canonical tags to merge property map pages and availability pages to their counterpart overview pages?
I have a property website, for each property are 4-5 tabs each with their own URL, these pages include the overview page which is content rich, and auxilliary pages such as maps, availability, can I use a canonical tag to merge the tabs with very little content to their corresponding overview page which is content rich? I.e. www.mywebsite.co.uk/property-1/overview This page has tabs for map, town info, availability which all have their own url i.e. www.mywebsite.co.uk/property-1/map
Technical SEO | | assertive-media
www.mywebsite.co.uk/property-1/availability
www.mywebsite.co.uk/property-1/towninfo Because these auxilary pages do not contain much content can I place a canonical tag in them pointing back to the content rich overview page at www.mywebsite.co.uk/property-1/overview?0