How to prevent directory from being accessed by search engines?
-
Pretty much as the question says, is there any way to stop search engines from crawling a directory? I am working on a Wordpress installation for my site but don't want it to be listed in search engines until it's ready to be shown to the world. I know the simplest way is to password-protect the directory but I had some issues when I tried to implement that so I'd like to see if there's a way to do it without passwords. Thanks in advance.
-
But don't forget to remove that Disallow out of Robots.txt when you go live - if you want those pages to be indexed (and also the Meta-robots noindex nofollow).
Otherwise you might be pulling your hair out trying to figure out why none of your pages are getting indexed in the SERPs.
-
You're absolutely right! I left that part out. Thanks
-
The robots.txt file does not guarantee that your pages will not show up in search results! Your best bet after password protection is adding a NoIndex meta tag to you page headers.
Google have openly said that they obey this tag (Matt Cutts).
-
Xee,
It always help, and it is very easy to implement. This function to show the path to the sitemap ir very good.
-
It's not required to have the ending slash. At least, it works for us without it.
-
As it is, my site is just phpBB3 forums (www.bearsfansonline.com); would a sitemap really help that much?
-
If you don't have an robot.txt file, you need to include some important stuff first.
First, do you have a sitemap.xlm for your website? If not, its very important and you should creat it at: http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/
Create a robot.txt file and include the follow:
User-agent: * allow: / disallow: /directoryname
Sitemap: http://www.yousite.com/sitemap.xmlWith this you will inform all robots where is your sitemap. You should read more about robots.txt in this great post: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/robot-access-indexation-restriction-techniques-avoiding-conflicts
-
shouldn't you put a slash at the end of the directory in the robots file?
you can create the robots file through the Google Webmaster Tools
-
I don't have a robots.txt file in my root. Do I just create a text file, put the above lines into it, and upload it to my root after changing the name?
-
I'm assuming you want all search engines blocked from this directory. If so, edit your robots.txt file to state the following. This will block all bots from accessing a folder/directory on your site
User-agent: *
Disallow: /directoryname
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
-
Product photo links appear in search results
Since I'm new, I don't have any information. Product photo links appear in the search results. Is this a problem? because when you click on the link, it does not take you to a page, but to a blank page with only a photo. What should I do for this situation?
Technical SEO | | UgurKarabulut0 -
Best way to handle 301 redirects on a business directory
We work with quite a few sites that promote retail traders and feature a traders' directory with pages for each of the shops (around 500 listings in most cases). As retail strips, shops come and go all the time, so I get a lot of pages that are removed as the business is no longer present. Currently I've been doing 301 redirects to the home page of the directory if you try to access a deleted trader page, but this means a ever growing htaccess file with thousands of 301 redirects. Are we handling this the best way or is there a better way to tackle this situation?
Technical SEO | | Assemblo0 -
Hiding sub directory from a url string
I have been trying for a few hours now to hide a sub-directory from a url string on a joomla site using .htaccess every method i have found either has no effect or breaks the site. i am aiming to change all links with component in them: http://mysite.com/component/music/7335 to http://mysite.com/music/7335 I am using the latest Joomla 2.5 install but not sure how or if that affects anything. Any help would be greatly appreciated
Technical SEO | | omega0 -
Do the search engines penalise you for images being WATERMARKED?
Our site contains a library of thousands of images which we are thinking of watermarking. Does anyone know if Google penalise sites for this or is it best practice in order to protect revenues? As watermarking these images makes them less shareable (but protects revenues) i was thinking Google might then penalise us - which might affect traffic Any ideas?
Technical SEO | | KevinDunne0 -
Do search engines treat 307 redirects differently from 302 redirects?
We will need to send our users to an alternate version of our homepage for a few hours for a certain event. The SEO task at hand is to minimize the chance of the special homepage getting crawled and cached in the search engines in place of our normal homepage. (This has happened in the past so the concern is not imaginary.) Among other options, 302 and 307 redirects are being discussed. IE, redirecting www.domain.com to www.domain.com/specialpage. Having used 302s and 301s in the past, I am well aware of how search engines treat them. A 302 effectively says "Hey, Google! Please get rid of the old content on www.domain.com and replace it with the content on /specialpage!" Which is exactly what we don't want. My question is: do the search engines handle 307s any differently? I am hearing that the 307 does NOT result in the content of the second page being cached with the first URL. But I don't see that in the definition below (from w3.org). Then again, why differentiate it from the 302? 307 Temporary Redirect The requested resource resides temporarily under a different URI. Since the redirection MAY be altered on occasion, the client SHOULD continue to use the Request-URI for future requests. This response is only cacheable if indicated by a Cache-Control or Expires header field. The temporary URI SHOULD be given by the Location field in the response. Unless the request method was HEAD, the entity of the response SHOULD contain a short hypertext note with a hyperlink to the new URI(s) , since many pre-HTTP/1.1 user agents do not understand the 307 status. Therefore, the note SHOULD contain the information necessary for a user to repeat the original request on the new URI. If the 307 status code is received in response to a request other than GET or HEAD, the user agent MUST NOT automatically redirect the request unless it can be confirmed by the user, since this might change the conditions under which the request was issued.
Technical SEO | | CarsProduction0 -
How can affect the website redesign to my ranking position in Search Engines?
Hi, I have a few questions for you: I’ll will update my booking system and my website design. Now, I'm ranked in number one position with the keyword HOTELES EN CHIAPAS. In fact, several urls of my webiste appear in the search engines. Internal URLs like this: www.hotelesenchiapas.com.mx/obmp30/hotel/villa_mercedes_palenque/1/es/ My question is: I need to conserve this link structure or may i change it for something more friendly like this: www.hotelesenchiapas.com.mx/Palenque/Hoteles/Villa-mercedes-palenque/ And how affect this change to my rank position ?
Technical SEO | | hotelesenchiapas0 -
Anchor text in Flash Discoverable by Search Engines?
What recommendations do you all have to make anchor text discoverable in flash? More importantly is it even possible and does it contribute to link juice?
Technical SEO | | sunfever0
