Have you at any time desired to avert Google from indexing a certain URL on your world-wide-web web site and exhibiting it in their look for motor success web pages (SERPs)? If you control internet web-sites very long plenty of, a day will possible appear when you want to know how to do this.

The 3 methods most generally applied to reduce the indexing of a URL by Google are as follows:

Working with the rel=”nofollow” attribute on all anchor factors utilized to url to the web site to stop the back links from becoming adopted by the crawler.
Applying a disallow directive in the site’s robots.txt file to prevent the website page from being crawled and indexed.
Working with the meta robots tag with the content material=”noindex” attribute to avert the web site from becoming indexed.
When the discrepancies in the three strategies appear to be delicate at to start with glance, the performance can differ significantly depending on which system you choose.

Employing rel=”nofollow” to avert Google indexing

Several inexperienced webmasters try to prevent Google from indexing a specific URL by utilizing the rel=”nofollow” attribute on HTML anchor components. They insert the attribute to each individual anchor component on their internet site utilized to url to that URL.

Such as a rel=”nofollow” attribute on a website link prevents Google’s crawler from next the hyperlink which, in change, prevents them from identifying, crawling, and indexing the target webpage. While this process could possibly get the job done as a short-expression solution, it is not a feasible lengthy-expression option.

The flaw with this strategy is that it assumes all inbound links to the URL will include things like a rel=”nofollow” attribute. The webmaster, nonetheless, has no way to avoid other internet web pages from linking to the URL with a adopted connection. So the chances that the URL will eventually get crawled and indexed applying this strategy is very substantial.

Using robots.txt to stop Google indexing

A different popular strategy employed to prevent the indexing of a URL by Google is to use the robots.txt file. A disallow directive can be included to the robots.txt file for the URL in question. Google’s crawler will honor the directive which will reduce the website page from being crawled and indexed. In some situations, nonetheless, the URL can even now look in the SERPs.

From time to time Google will display a URL in their SERPs nevertheless they have by no means indexed the contents of that website page. If ample world-wide-web sites connection to the URL then Google can typically infer the topic of the website page from the website link text of those inbound hyperlinks. As a consequence they will exhibit the URL in the SERPs for related lookups. Whilst working with a disallow directive in the robots.txt file will avoid Google from crawling and indexing a URL, it does not assurance that the URL will under no circumstances surface in the SERPs.

Using the meta robots tag to avoid Google indexing

If you need to have to protect against Google from indexing a URL even though also stopping that URL from getting shown in the SERPs then the most powerful approach is to use a meta robots tag with a content=”noindex” attribute in the head aspect of the website web site. Of course, for Google to really see this meta robots tag they require to initial be equipped to discover and crawl the website page, so do not block the URL with robots.txt. When google serp data and discovers the meta robots noindex tag, they will flag the URL so that it will in no way be revealed in the SERPs. This is the most efficient way to reduce Google from indexing a URL and exhibiting it in their look for outcomes.