Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Let your reputation grow with Reviews AI
      Moz Local

      Let your reputation grow with Reviews AI

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Technical SEO
    4. Temporarily suspend Googlebot without blocking users

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Temporarily suspend Googlebot without blocking users

    Technical SEO
    4
    7
    2395
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • lzhao
      lzhao last edited by

      We'll soon be launching a redesign, on a new platform, migrating millions of pages to new URLs.

      How can I tell Google (and other crawlers) to temporarily (a day or two) ignore my site?  We're hoping to buy ourselves a small bit of time to verify redirects and live functionality before allowing Google to crawl and index the new architecture.

      GWT's recommendation is to 503 all pages - including robots.txt, but that also makes the site invisible to real site visitors, resulting in significant business loss.  Bad answer.

      I've heard some recommendations to disallow all user agents in robots.txt.   Any answer that puts the millions of pages we already have indexed at risk is also a bad answer.

      Thanks

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • lzhao
        lzhao @lzhao last edited by

        So it seems like we've gone full circle.

        The initial question was, "How can I tell Google (and other crawlers) to temporarily (a day or two) ignore my site?  We're hoping to buy ourselves a small bit of time to verify redirects and live functionality before allowing Google to crawl and index the new architecture."

        Sounds like the answer is, 'that's not possible'.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Igal_Zeifman
          Igal_Zeifman @lzhao last edited by

          Putting a noindex/nofollow on an index url will remove it from SERPs, although some ulrs will still show for direct search (using the url itself as a KW) but even then they will appear as clear links without any TItle/Description details.

          Using a 301 redirect will remove the old page from index, regardless of noindex/nofollow.

          If you are using a noindex/nofollow for the new url - both will not show.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • lzhao
            lzhao @lzhao last edited by

            Thank you, Ruth!

            Can I ask a clarifying question?

            If I put a noindex/nofollow on the new urls, wouldn't the result be the same as if I put noindex/nofollow on the indexed urls?  There is only one instance of each page - and all of the millions of  indexed URLs will be redirecting to new urls.

            Here is my assumption:   if I put noindex/nofollow on the new urls - a search bot will crawl the old url, follow the redirect to the new url, detect the noindex/nofollow, and then drop the old, indexed url from their index.  Is that the wrong assumption?

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • RuthBurrReedy
              RuthBurrReedy @lzhao last edited by

              I would use robots.txt to noindex the whole website as well - but just the new pages, not the old ones. Then when you're ready to be crawled, remove the robots.txt entry and Fetch as Googlebot to get re-crawled.  You may fall out of the index for a day or two but should quickly be re-indexed.

              Another solution would be to use the meta robots tag to individually noindex each page (if there's a way to do that in your CMS, obviously adding them by hand wouldn't be scalable), and then remove.  That may increase your chances of getting re-crawled and re-indexed sooner.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • lzhao
                lzhao @Intergen last edited by

                Thanks for the response, Mark.

                It sounds as if you tried this on a few new pages.

                I'm talking about millions of existing pages.

                Would you robots.txt noindex your entire website?   Seems like you'd run a huge risk of being dumped from the index entirely.

                RuthBurrReedy lzhao Igal_Zeifman 4 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • Intergen
                  Intergen last edited by

                  I recommend robots text noindex, nofollow.

                  That way people can still see the pages they just aren't indexed in Google yet.

                  As we developed some new pages on one of our sites we did this and we could still view pages and send folks there that we wanted to see the content for feedback - but no one else knew they were there.

                  lzhao 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • 1 / 1
                  • First post
                    Last post

                  Got a burning SEO question?

                  Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                  Start my free trial


                  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.

                  • See all categories

                  Related Questions

                  • rkdc

                    Bing Webmaster Shows Domain without WWW

                    One of our sites shows thousands of 301 redirects due to domain without www in Bing Webmaster under crawl Information page. It’s been like this for a long time. None of the internal pages have domain without www, it was tested through Screaming Frog. We do have www preference set in google webmaster, but unfortunately bing doesn’t have this option.  We also specify URL with www preference through structural data, but that still doesn’t help. Did anyone have similar problems with Bing, and how did you resolve it?

                    Technical SEO | | rkdc
                    1
                  • marchexmarketingmcc

                    Trying to find all internal links to a specific page (without index)

                    Hi guys -- Still waiting on Moz to index a page of mine. We launched a new site over two months ago. In the meantime, I really just need a list of internal links to a specific page because I want to change its URL. Does anybody know how to find that list (of internal links to 1 of my pages) without the Moz index? I appreciate the help!

                    Technical SEO | | marchexmarketingmcc
                    1
                  • GoldenRanking14

                    Some URLs were not accessible to Googlebot due to an HTTP status error.

                    Hello I'm a seo newbie and some help from the community here would be greatly appreciated. I have submitted the sitemap of my website in google webmasters tools and now I got this warning: "When we tested a sample of the URLs from your Sitemap, we found that some URLs were not accessible to Googlebot due to an HTTP status error. All accessible URLs will still be submitted." How do I fix this? What should I do? Many thanks in advance.

                    Technical SEO | | GoldenRanking14
                    0
                  • CharmingGuy

                    How to block text on a page to be indexed?

                    I would like to block the spider indexing a block of text inside a page , however I do not want to block the whole page with, for example , a noindex tag. I have tried already with a tag like this : chocolate pudding chocolate pudding However this is not working for my case, a travel related website. thanks in advance for your support. Best regards Gianluca

                    Technical SEO | | CharmingGuy
                    0
                  • Mark_Ginsberg

                    Blocking Affiliate Links via robots.txt

                    Hi, I work with a client who has a large affiliate network pointing to their domain which is a large part of their inbound marketing strategy. All of these links point to a subdomain of affiliates.example.com, which then redirects the links through a 301 redirect to the relevant target page for the link. These links have been showing up in Webmaster Tools as top linking domains and also in the latest downloaded links reports. To follow guidelines and ensure that these links aren't counted by Google for either positive or negative impact on the site, we have added a block on the robots.txt of the affiliates.example.com subdomain, blocking search engines from crawling the full subddomain. The robots.txt file is the following code: User-agent: * Disallow: / We have authenticated the subdomain with Google Webmaster Tools and made certain that Google can reach and read the robots.txt file. We know they are being blocked from reading the affiliates subdomain. However, we added this affiliates subdomain block a few weeks ago to the robots.txt, but links are still showing up in the latest downloads report as first being discovered after we added the block. It's been a few weeks already, and we want to make sure that the block was implemented properly and that these links aren't being used to negatively impact the site. Any suggestions or clarification would be helpful - if the subdomain is being blocked for the search engines, why are the search engines following the links and reporting them in the www.example.com subdomain GWMT account as latest links. And if the block is implemented properly, will the total number of links pointing to our site  as reported in the links to your site section be reduced, or does this not have an impact on that figure?From a development standpoint, it's a much easier fix for us to adjust the robots.txt file than to change the affiliate linking connection from a 301 to a 302, which is why we decided to go with this option.Any help you can offer will be greatly appreciated.Thanks,Mark

                    Technical SEO | | Mark_Ginsberg
                    0
                  • GregB123

                    Canonical tag for Home page: with or without / at the end???

                    Setting up canonical tags for an old site. I really need advice on that darn backslash / at the end of the homepage URL. We have incoming links to the homepage as http://www.mysite.com (without the backslash), and as http://www.mysite.com/ (with the backslash), and as http://www.mysite.com/index.html I know that there should be 301 redirects to just one version, but I need to know more about the canonical tags... Which should the canonical tag be??? (without the backslash) or (with the backslash) Thanks for your help! 🙂

                    Technical SEO | | GregB123
                    0
                  • SuperMikeLewis

                    Googlebot Crawl Rate causing site slowdown

                    I am hearing from my IT department that Googlebot is causing as massive slowdown/crash our site. We get 3.5 to 4 million pageviews a month and add 70-100 new articles on the website each day. We provide daily stock research and marke analysis, so its all high quality relevant content. Here are the crawl stats from WMT: http://imgur.com/dyIbf I have not worked with a lot of high volume high traffic sites before, but these crawl stats do not seem to be out of line. My team is getting pressure from the sysadmins to slow down the crawl rate, or block some or all of the site from GoogleBot. Do these crawl stats seem in line with sites? Would slowing down crawl rates have a big effect on rankings? Thanks

                    Technical SEO | | SuperMikeLewis
                    0
                  • MirandaP

                    How to allow googlebot past paywall

                    Does anyone know of any ways or ideas to allow Google/Bing etc. to index your content, but have it behind a paywall for users?

                    Technical SEO | | MirandaP
                    0

                  Get started with Moz Pro!

                  Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                  Start my free trial
                  Products
                  • Moz Pro
                  • Moz Local
                  • Moz API
                  • Moz Data
                  • STAT
                  • Product Updates
                  Moz Solutions
                  • SMB Solutions
                  • Agency Solutions
                  • Enterprise Solutions
                  • Digital Marketers
                  Free SEO Tools
                  • Domain Authority Checker
                  • Link Explorer
                  • Keyword Explorer
                  • Competitive Research
                  • Brand Authority Checker
                  • Local Citation Checker
                  • MozBar Extension
                  • MozCast
                  Resources
                  • Blog
                  • SEO Learning Center
                  • Help Hub
                  • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                  • How-to Guides
                  • Moz Academy
                  • API Docs
                  About Moz
                  • About
                  • Team
                  • Careers
                  • Contact
                  Why Moz
                  • Case Studies
                  • Testimonials
                  Get Involved
                  • Become an Affiliate
                  • MozCon
                  • Webinars
                  • Practical Marketer Series
                  • MozPod
                  Connect with us

                  Contact the Help team

                  Join our newsletter
                  Moz logo
                  © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                  • Accessibility
                  • Terms of Use
                  • Privacy

                  Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.