noindex
The noindex value of an HTML robots meta tag requests that automated Internet bots avoid indexing a web page.[1][2] Reasons why one might want to use this meta tag include advising robots not to index a very large database, webpages that are very transitory, pages that one wishes to keep slightly more private, or the printer and mobile-friendly versions of pages. Since the burden of honoring a website's noindex tag lies with the author of the search robot, sometimes these tags are ignored. Also the interpretation of the noindex tag is sometimes slightly different from one search engine company to the next.
Other possible values of the robots meta tag are "nofollow", "all" and "index".[1]
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[edit] Example
<html> <head> <meta name="robots" content="noindex" /> <title>Don't index this page</title> </head>
[edit] Bot-specific Directives
There are ways to send the noindex directive only for certain bots, typically by using a different "name" value of the meta tag.
For example, to specifically block Google's bot,[3] specify
<meta name="googlebot" content="noindex" />
Or, to block Yahoo!'s bot,[4] specify
<meta name="Slurp" content="noindex" />
[edit] Russian <noindex> tag
The Russian search engine Yandex introduced a new tag <noindex> which only prevents indexing of the content between the tags, not a whole web page.
<body> Do index this text block. <noindex>Don't index this text block</noindex> </body>
[edit] See also
- Nofollow link attribute3
- Robots Exclusion Standard
[edit] References
- ^ a b [1], Official W3 specification
- ^ [2], About the Robots <META> tag
- ^ Using meta tags to block access to your site, Google Webmasters Tools Help
- ^ How to Prevent Yahoo! Search From Indexing Specific Pages, Yahoo! Search Help
[edit] External links
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