Have you ever wanted to protect against Google from indexing a certain URL on your web web-site and exhibiting it in their search motor benefits internet pages (SERPs)? If you regulate internet web sites very long ample, a working day will very likely come when you need to know how to do this.

The 3 approaches most frequently applied to prevent the indexing of a URL by Google are as follows:

Applying the rel=”nofollow” attribute on all anchor components utilised to website link to the page to protect against the back links from getting adopted by the crawler.
Utilizing a disallow directive in the site’s robots.txt file to prevent the website page from getting crawled and indexed.
Employing the meta robots tag with the articles=”noindex” attribute to reduce the website page from being indexed.
Though the distinctions in the 3 techniques look to be delicate at to start with look, the efficiency can differ significantly relying on which technique you opt for.

Employing rel=”nofollow” to avoid Google indexing

Several inexperienced webmasters attempt to prevent Google from indexing a distinct URL by applying the rel=”nofollow” attribute on HTML anchor elements. They include the attribute to each anchor element on their internet site applied to backlink to that URL.

Like a rel=”nofollow” attribute on a url prevents Google’s crawler from subsequent the website link which, in convert, helps prevent them from getting, crawling, and indexing the focus on site. When this approach may do the job as a limited-term resolution, it is not a feasible extended-phrase remedy.

The flaw with this solution is that it assumes all inbound hyperlinks to the URL will involve a rel=”nofollow” attribute. The webmaster, on the other hand, has no way to avoid other world wide web websites from linking to the URL with a followed connection. So the probabilities that the URL will at some point get crawled and indexed utilizing this process is really substantial.

Applying robots.txt to reduce Google indexing

One more typical method used to reduce the indexing of a URL by Google is to use the robots.txt file. A disallow directive can be additional to the robots.txt file for the URL in issue. Google’s crawler will honor the directive which will avert the web site from getting crawled and indexed. In some circumstances, however, the URL can even now surface in the SERPs.

In google reverse index will exhibit a URL in their SERPs although they have by no means indexed the contents of that page. If enough internet web pages url to the URL then Google can normally infer the topic of the web site from the backlink textual content of those people inbound back links. As a consequence they will show the URL in the SERPs for relevant lookups. Whilst employing a disallow directive in the robots.txt file will protect against Google from crawling and indexing a URL, it does not warranty that the URL will never ever seem in the SERPs.

Making use of the meta robots tag to reduce Google indexing

If you require to stop Google from indexing a URL although also preventing that URL from staying exhibited in the SERPs then the most productive method is to use a meta robots tag with a information=”noindex” attribute inside of the head ingredient of the world wide web webpage. Of class, for Google to basically see this meta robots tag they need to have to to start with be ready to discover and crawl the web site, so do not block the URL with robots.txt. When Google crawls the web site and discovers the meta robots noindex tag, they will flag the URL so that it will never be demonstrated in the SERPs. This is the most productive way to protect against Google from indexing a URL and displaying it in their lookup outcomes.