Stop Search Engines from Indexing a Webpage


Categories
Tags
Have a webpage that you want Google Search to ignore? Here’s how…

This one’s nice and easy.

Simply add the code below within the head element of the webpage in question. When Google’s bots next attempt to crawl your website/webpage, it’ll see this meta data and drop it from Google Search results, whether other sites link to it or not. With that in mind, I usually make it the top-most piece of meta data within the header tag, so it’s read by the bots right away.

This is a useful technique to use for test pages, secret pages, pages that you want to be viewed by direct traffic rather than searched for, pages that are trumping more important pages in your sitelinks (a collection of links that Google determines to be the most useful to help users navigate your website) etc.

<meta name="robots" content="noindex">

You can use multiple directives like so (nofollow tells Google not to follow links on this page):

<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow">

There are various other directives that can be used, which can be seen here on Google Search Central.

Comments

Whether you have feedback, a question, want to share your opinion, or simply want to say thank you - we welcome comments! Please read the disclaimer.

Disclaimer and Legal Information

The use of any content found on or via this website (code, how to guides etc.) is done so at your own risk. We take no responsibility for any issues encountered.

This blog and its authors will not be held responsible for any misuse, reuse, recycled and cited/uncited copies of content from this website by others.

The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position or opinion of any other agency, organisation, employer or company.

Comments are moderated but we do not take any responsibility for any libel or litigation that results from something written in a comment. We reserve the right to reject or delete any comment for any reason whatsoever (abusive, profane, rude etc). Please keep your comments polite and relevant.

We are happy for you to quote and share our content in any reasonable manner, e.g. post links to our blogs on social media, but not in any way that suggests that we, or our authors, endorse you, your use or your views. Nothing negative please.

We appreciate attributions, e.g. a link to our website (www.dragoncode.co.uk).

Thank you – we hope you find the website useful.