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.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • 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. Removing CSS & JS Files from Index

    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.

    Removing CSS & JS Files from Index

    Technical SEO
    4
    8
    2894
    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.
    • kirmeliux
      kirmeliux last edited by

      Hi,

      Google has indexed a few .CSS and .JS files that belong to our WordPress plugins and themes. I had them blocked via robots, but realized this doesn't prevent indexation (and can likely hurt us since Google wants to access these files).

      I've since removed the robots instructions, submitted a removal request via Search Console, but want to make sure they don't come back.

      Is there a way to put a noindex tag within .CSS and .JS files? Or should I do something with .htaccess instead?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • kirmeliux
        kirmeliux @Niels.V last edited by

        I figured .htaccess would be the best route. Thank you for researching and confirming. I appreciate it.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • kirmeliux
          kirmeliux @TimHolmes last edited by

          Hi Tim,

          Assigning a noindex tag to these files will not block them, only prevent them from showing in SERPs. This is the intended goal and the reason I deleted my robots.txt file which prevented crawling.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Niels.V
            Niels.V @TimHolmes last edited by

            There's quite a big difference between crawling directives, which block and indexing directives. This article by (former?) Moz user S_ebastian_ is a good foundation read.

            This article at developers.google.com is a good second read. If I'm understanding it right, Google thinks in terms of crawling directives vs indexing / serving directives.

            My attempt at <tl rl="">:</tl>

            crawling = looking, using in any way :: controlled via robots.txt

            indexing / serving = indexing, archiving, displaying snippets in results, etc :: controlled via html meta tags or web server htaccess (or similar for other web servers).

            I'm not convinced yet, that asking for noindex via htaccess causes the same sort of grief that deny in robots.txt causes.

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

              I would seriously think again when it comes to blocking/no-indexing your CSS and JS files - Google has in the past stated that if they cannot fully render your site properly then this could lead to poorer rankings.

              You will also likely get notifications in your Search Console as errors for this too.

              Check out this great article from July this year which goes into more details. 

              Niels.V kirmeliux 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • Niels.V
                Niels.V @kirmeliux last edited by

                I haven't encountered undesirable .css or .js indexing myself (yet), but as you surmised, maybe this htaccess directive might be worth trying?

                <filesmatch ".(txt|log|xml|css|js)$"="">Header set X-Robots-Tag "noindex"</filesmatch>

                Google seems to support it

                kirmeliux 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                • kirmeliux
                  kirmeliux @Mobilio last edited by

                  Unless I'm severely misreading the links provided, which I've read before, it seems Google is stating that they read, render, and sometimes index .CSS and .JS files. Here's an article written a week after the second article you posted.

                  The aforementioned WordPress plugin and theme files hosted on my server are indeed showing up in Google SERPs.

                  I do not want to prevent Googlebot from reaching these files as they're needed for optimal site performance, but I do want them to be no-indexed. Thus, I don't want robots.txt to prevent crawling, only indexing.

                  Let me know if I'm misunderstanding.

                  Niels.V 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • Mobilio
                    Mobilio last edited by

                    TL;DR - You're hesitated about problem that doesn't exist.

                    Googlebot doesn't index CSS or JS files. They index text files, HTML, PDF, DOC, XLS, etc. But doesn't index style sheets or javascript files.

                    All you need in WordPress is to create blank robots.txt file where WP is installed with this content:

                    User-agent: *
                    Disallow:
                    Sitemap: http://site/sitemap-file-name.xml

                    And that's all. This is explain many times:

                    http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.bg/2014/05/understanding-web-pages-better.html
                    http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.bg/2014/10/updating-our-technical-webmaster.html

                    kirmeliux 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote -1
                    • 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

                    • flo_seo

                      Not all images indexed in Google

                      Hi all, Recently, got an unusual issue with images in Google index. We have more than 1,500 images in our sitemap, but according to Search Console only 273 of those are indexed. If I check Google image search directly, I find more images in index, but still not all of them. For example this post has 28 images and only 17 are indexed in Google image. This is happening to other posts as well. Checked all possible reasons (missing alt, image as background, file size, fetch and render in Search Console), but none of these are relevant in our case. So, everything looks fine, but not all images are in index. Any ideas on this issue? Your feedback is much appreciated, thanks

                      Technical SEO | | flo_seo
                      1
                    • muzzmoz

                      Indexed pages

                      Just started a site audit and trying to determine the number of pages on a client site and whether there are more pages being indexed than actually exist. I've used four tools and got four very different answers... Google Search Console: 237 indexed pages Google search using site command: 468 results MOZ site crawl: 1013 unique URLs Screaming Frog: 183 page titles, 187 URIs (note this is a free licence, but should cut off at 500) Can anyone shed any light on why they differ so much? And where lies the truth?

                      Technical SEO | | muzzmoz
                      1
                    • DutchG

                      Removed Product page on our website, what to do

                      We just removed an entire product category on our website, (product pages still exist, but will be removed soon as well) Should we be setting up re-directs, or can we simply delete this category and product 
                      pages and do nothing? We just received this in Google Webmasters tools: Google detected a significant increase in the number of URLs that return a 404 (Page Not Found) error. We have not updated the sitemap yet...Would this be enough to do or should we do more? You can view our website here: http://tinyurl.com/6la8 We removed the entire "Spring Planted Category"

                      Technical SEO | | DutchG
                      0
                    • zenstorageunits

                      Sitemap indexed pages dropping

                      About a month ago I noticed my pages indexed from my sitemap are dropping.There are 134 pages in my sitemap and only 11 are indexed. It used to be 117 pages and just died off quickly. I still seem to be getting consistant search traffic but I'm just not sure whats causing this. There are no warnings or manual actions required in GWT that I can find.

                      Technical SEO | | zenstorageunits
                      0
                    • Dan-Lawrence

                      Staging & Development areas should be not indexable (i.e. no followed/no index in meta robots etc)

                      Hi I take it if theres a staging or development area on a subdomain for a site, who's content is hence usually duplicate then this should not be indexable i.e. (no-indexed & nofollowed in metarobots) ? In order to prevent dupe content probs as well as non project related people seeing work in progress or finding accidentally in search engine listings ? Also if theres no such info in meta robots is there any other way it may have been made non-indexable, or at least dupe content prob removed by canonicalising the page to the equivalent page on the live site ? In the case in question i am finding it listed in serps when i search for the staging/dev area url, so i presume this needs urgent attention ? Cheers Dan

                      Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence
                      0
                    • JohnHuynh

                      How to remove all sandbox test site link indexed by google?

                      When develop site, I have a test domain is sandbox.abc.com, this site contents are same as abc.com. But, now I search site:sandbox.abc.com and aware of content duplicate with main site abc.com My question is how to remove all this link from goolge. p/s: I have just add robots.txt to sandbox and disallow all pages. Thanks,

                      Technical SEO | | JohnHuynh
                      0
                    • nicole.healthline

                      Does Google index XML files?

                      Does Google or other search engines include XML files in their index? More specifically, I am wondering how Google knows the difference between an xml filetype and an RSS feed.

                      Technical SEO | | nicole.healthline
                      0
                    • DarwinChinaSEO

                      Why google index my IP URL

                      hi guys, a question please. if site:112.65.247.14 , you can see google index our website IP address, this could duplicate with our darwinmarketing.com content pages. i am not quite sure why google index my IP pages while index domain pages, i understand this could because of backlink, internal link and etc, but i don't see obvious issues there, also i have submit request to google team to remove ip address index, but seems no luck. Please do you have any other suggestion on this? i was trying to do change of address setting in Google Webmaster Tools, but didn't allow as it said "Restricted to root level domains only", any ideas? Thank you! boson

                      Technical SEO | | DarwinChinaSEO
                      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.