Have you ever needed to prevent Google from indexing a specific URL on your website web page and exhibiting it in their search engine results pages (SERPs)? If google index download regulate website web pages long more than enough, a day will most likely occur when you need to have to know how to do this.
The a few procedures most commonly applied to prevent the indexing of a URL by Google are as follows:
Using the rel=”nofollow” attribute on all anchor factors applied to url to the web site to reduce the backlinks from becoming adopted by the crawler.
Employing a disallow directive in the site’s robots.txt file to reduce the website page from staying crawled and indexed.
Applying the meta robots tag with the content material=”noindex” attribute to avert the webpage from remaining indexed.
Whilst the differences in the three approaches appear to be delicate at initial look, the efficiency can range considerably dependent on which approach you pick out.
Using rel=”nofollow” to protect against Google indexing
Lots of inexperienced site owners try to avert Google from indexing a unique URL by applying the rel=”nofollow” attribute on HTML anchor features. They add the attribute to each anchor component on their internet site utilised to website link to that URL.
Together with a rel=”nofollow” attribute on a link stops Google’s crawler from adhering to the backlink which, in flip, prevents them from getting, crawling, and indexing the target site. Even though this method might operate as a brief-phrase alternative, it is not a viable lengthy-expression solution.
The flaw with this approach is that it assumes all inbound back links to the URL will include things like a rel=”nofollow” attribute. The webmaster, even so, has no way to stop other internet internet sites from linking to the URL with a followed website link. So the likelihood that the URL will at some point get crawled and indexed using this approach is rather high.
Making use of robots.txt to avert Google indexing
A different prevalent process utilized to avert the indexing of a URL by Google is to use the robots.txt file. A disallow directive can be extra to the robots.txt file for the URL in dilemma. Google’s crawler will honor the directive which will avoid the website page from getting crawled and indexed. In some instances, nonetheless, the URL can even now show up in the SERPs.
Often Google will display a URL in their SERPs nevertheless they have never indexed the contents of that webpage. If adequate internet web pages website link to the URL then Google can generally infer the topic of the web site from the url textual content of individuals inbound one-way links. As a outcome they will demonstrate the URL in the SERPs for similar lookups. When using a disallow directive in the robots.txt file will stop Google from crawling and indexing a URL, it does not assure that the URL will by no means look in the SERPs.
Applying the meta robots tag to stop Google indexing
If you require to avoid Google from indexing a URL whilst also avoiding that URL from currently being exhibited in the SERPs then the most helpful approach is to use a meta robots tag with a content material=”noindex” attribute inside the head aspect of the net site. Of study course, for Google to really see this meta robots tag they need to have to initial be able to find and crawl the site, so do not block the URL with robots.txt. When Google crawls the webpage and discovers the meta robots noindex tag, they will flag the URL so that it will hardly ever be demonstrated in the SERPs. This is the most powerful way to avoid Google from indexing a URL and displaying it in their search success.