Thread: I DON'T want to be indexed - best method??

I want to put a site up as an easy way for development collaberation between a few individuals; so although the web site is "Live" just because it exists, I want to avoid it being indexed until we're ready to do so.

Aside from leaving the Meta Tags blank and forcing the pages as expired, is there other steps one can take to minimize or prohibit search engines from finding/indexing the pages?

Thanks,

Adrian

Use the No Follow - No Index tags. Google it

Hi... I used the "no index" robot directions and ended up with all pages indexed..and showing... why I don't know... Maybe submitting the index page with no links for the "DON'T wana be indexed pages"... then putting in the links once the index is up on search engine will work...I hope someone with more knowledge about this will weigh in... Doug

You can go to a google page and request taking your site off of google, they will ask you for your email and site url.
When you have confirmed, they will take you off the index database.

Will get back to you with the google url later.....................

Use a robot.txt file and *disallow googlebot

you can disallow all bots by name in this manner. However, when you are ready it will take some doing getting them to come back without lots of links etc and going in and submitting again.

Karen

Originally Posted by adrianbrookes

I want to put a site up as an easy way for development collaberation between a few individuals; so although the web site is "Live" just because it exists, I want to avoid it being indexed until we're ready to do so.

Aside from leaving the Meta Tags blank and forcing the pages as expired, is there other steps one can take to minimize or prohibit search engines from finding/indexing the pages?

Thanks,

Adrian

In addition to the bot.text solution, you may wish to consider publishing all the pages you wish to prevent the general public from actually accessing (previously SE-cached or not) in a password-protected directory.
This also allows you to exert even a bit more control, even within your "community" of users....