Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
No Index PDFs
-
Our products have about 4 PDFs a piece, which really inflates our indexed pages. I was wondering if I could add REL=No Index to the PDF's URL? All of the files are on a file server, so they are embedded with links on our product pages. I know I could add a No Follow attribute, but I was wondering if any one knew if the No Index would work the same or if that is even possible. Thanks!
-
The files aren't duplicate. I am familiar with using the XRobots tag. I was really just curious if my theory would work.
Thanks for all your input.
-
Hi Monica,
I presume you already check all the options before posting this question. I have concluded this by seeing your others posts/reply in this community.
Now here is my answer
To prevent your PDF file (or any non HTML file) from being listed in search results, the only way is to use the HTTP X-Robots-Tag response header, e.g.:
X-Robots-Tag: noindex
robots.txt does not prevent your page from being listed in search results.
What it does is stop the bot from crawling your page, but if a third party links to your PDF file from their website, your page will still be listed.
If you stop the bot from crawling your page using robots.txt, it will not have the chance to see the X-Robots-Tag: noindex response tag. Therefore, never ever ever disallow a page in robots.txt if you employ the X-Robots-Tag header.
I hope it helps but not very sure.
Thanks
-
-
If you want to deindex all PDF files, I recommend using the x-robots-tag in .htaccess - https://yoast.com/x-robots-tag-play/
-
If the PDFs are pdf versions of existing pages, I would set canonicals to point to the URL you do want indexed (#2 on http://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/blog/htaccess-file-snippets-for-seos )
-
-
If the pdf's are in a separate folder on your site - you could mark that folder as noindex in robots.txt
As far as I know, it's not possible to add a noindex to a link.
rgds
Dirk
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Keywords are indexed on the home page
Hello everyone, For one of our websites, we have optimized for many keywords. However, it seems that every keyword is indexed on the home page, and thus not ranked properly. This occurs only on one of our many websites. I am wondering if anyone knows the cause of this issue, and how to solve it. Thank you.
Technical SEO | | Ginovdw1 -
Should search pages be indexed?
Hey guys, I've always believed that search pages should be no-indexed but now I'm wondering if there is an argument to index them? Appreciate any thoughts!
Technical SEO | | RebekahVP0 -
Staging & Development areas should be not indexable (i.e. no followed/no index in meta robots etc)
Hi I take it if theres a staging or development area on a subdomain for a site, who's content is hence usually duplicate then this should not be indexable i.e. (no-indexed & nofollowed in metarobots) ? In order to prevent dupe content probs as well as non project related people seeing work in progress or finding accidentally in search engine listings ? Also if theres no such info in meta robots is there any other way it may have been made non-indexable, or at least dupe content prob removed by canonicalising the page to the equivalent page on the live site ? In the case in question i am finding it listed in serps when i search for the staging/dev area url, so i presume this needs urgent attention ? Cheers Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Getting a video displaying a lightbox indexed
We have created a video for a category page with the goal of building links to the page and improving the conversion rate of visitors to the page. This category is Christmas oriented so we want to get the video dropped in ASAP. Unfortunately there was a mixup with our developer and he created a lightbox pop-up to display the video on the category page. I'm concerned this will hurt our ability to get the video indexed in Google. Here was his response. Is what he says here true? "With the video originally being in lightbox the iFrame Embed was enough since the video can't be on the page, it would have to be hidden on the page which is ignored by Google. The SEO would be derived from modifying the video sitemap to define the category page as the HTML page for the Wistia video and Google will make the association. The sitemap did all the heavy lifting, the schema markup did not come till later so it had no additional affect on Google other then to re-enforce the sitemap." Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | GManSEO0 -
De-indexing millions of pages - would this work?
Hi all, We run an e-commerce site with a catalogue of around 5 million products. Unfortunately, we have let Googlebot crawl and index tens of millions of search URLs, the majority of which are very thin of content or duplicates of other URLs. In short: we are in deep. Our bloated Google-index is hampering our real content to rank; Googlebot does not bother crawling our real content (product pages specifically) and hammers the life out of our servers. Since having Googlebot crawl and de-index tens of millions of old URLs would probably take years (?), my plan is this: 301 redirect all old SERP URLs to a new SERP URL. If new URL should not be indexed, add meta robots noindex tag on new URL. When it is evident that Google has indexed most "high quality" new URLs, robots.txt disallow crawling of old SERP URLs. Then directory style remove all old SERP URLs in GWT URL Removal Tool This would be an example of an old URL:
Technical SEO | | TalkInThePark
www.site.com/cgi-bin/weirdapplicationname.cgi?word=bmw&what=1.2&how=2 This would be an example of a new URL:
www.site.com/search?q=bmw&category=cars&color=blue I have to specific questions: Would Google both de-index the old URL and not index the new URL after 301 redirecting the old URL to the new URL (which is noindexed) as described in point 2 above? What risks are associated with removing tens of millions of URLs directory style in GWT URL Removal Tool? I have done this before but then I removed "only" some useless 50 000 "add to cart"-URLs.Google says themselves that you should not remove duplicate/thin content this way and that using this tool tools this way "may cause problems for your site". And yes, these tens of millions of SERP URLs is a result of a faceted navigation/search function let loose all to long.
And no, we cannot wait for Googlebot to crawl all these millions of URLs in order to discover the 301. By then we would be out of business. Best regards,
TalkInThePark0 -
Instant Indexing
I've been working on a site for a while now, methodically building content and building trust and authority. Lately I've noticed that anything I publish there appears to be instantly indexed by Google, which surprises me. I haven't had this happen before so I'm curious. I'd be interested to hear the experience of others.
Technical SEO | | waynekolenchuk0 -
How to get Google to index another page
Hi, I will try to make my question clear, although it is a bit complex. For my site the most important keyword is "Insurance" or at least the danish variation of this. My problem is that Google are'nt indexing my frontpage on this, but are indexing a subpage - www.mydomain.dk/insurance instead of www.mydomain.dk. My link bulding will be to subpages and to my main domain, but i wont be able to get that many links to www.mydomain.dk/insurance. So im interested in making my frontpage the page that is my main page for the keyword insurance, but without just blowing the traffic im getting from the subpage at the moment. Is there any solutions to do this? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | Petersen110 -
How to tell if PDF content is being indexed?
I've searched extensively for this, but could not find a definitive answer. We recently updated our website and it contains links to about 30 PDF data sheets. I want to determine if the text from these PDFs is being archived by search engines. When I do this search http://bit.ly/rRYJPe (google - site:www.gamma-sci.com and filetype:pdf) I can see that the PDF urls are getting indexed, but does that mean that their content is getting indexed? I have read in other posts/places that if you can copy text from a PDF and paste it that means Google can index the content. When I try this with PDFs from our site I cannot copy text, but I was told that these PDFs were all created from Word docs, so they should be indexable, correct? Since WordPress has you upload PDFs like they are an image could this be causing the problem? Would it make sense to take the time and extract all of the PDF content to html? Thanks for any assistance, this has been driving me crazy.
Technical SEO | | zazo0