• majorAlexa

        See all notifications

        Skip to content
        Moz logo Menu open Menu close
        • Products
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Pro Home
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Home
          • STAT
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Home
          • Compare SEO Products
          • Moz Data
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis
          • Keyword Explorer
          • Link Explorer
          • Competitive Research
          • MozBar
          • More Free SEO Tools
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
          • SEO Learning Center
          • Moz Academy
          • MozCon
          • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers
          • Agency Solutions
          • Enterprise Solutions
          • Small Business Solutions
          • The Moz Story
          • New Releases
        • Log in
        • Log out
        • Products
          • Moz Pro

            Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

          • Moz Local

            Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

          • STAT

            SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

          • Moz API

            Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

          • Compare SEO Products

            See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

          • Moz Data

            Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

          Let your business shine with Listings AI
          Moz Local

          Let your business shine with Listings AI

          Learn more
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis

            Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

          • Keyword Explorer

            Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

          • Link Explorer

            Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

          • Competitive Research

            Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

          • MozBar

            See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

          • More Free SEO Tools

            Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
          Moz Pro

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

          Learn more
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO

            The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

          • SEO Learning Center

            Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

          • On-Demand Webinars

            Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

          • How-To Guides

            Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

          • Moz Academy

            Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

          • MozCon

            Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
          Moz API

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

          Find your plan
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers

            Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

          • Small Business Solutions

            Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

          • Agency Solutions

            Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

          • Enterprise Solutions

            Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

          • The Moz Story

            Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

          • New Releases

            Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

          Surface actionable competitive intel
          New Feature

          Surface actionable competitive intel

          Learn More
        • Log in
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Dashboard
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Dashboard
          • Moz Academy
        • Avatar
          • Moz Home
          • Notifications
          • Account & Billing
          • Manage Users
          • Community Profile
          • My Q&A
          • My Videos
          • Log Out

        The Moz Q&A Forum

        • Forum
        • Questions
        • My Q&A
        • Users
        • Ask the Community

        Welcome to the Q&A Forum

        Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

        1. Home
        2. SEO Tactics
        3. Technical SEO
        4. Staging & Development areas should be not indexable (i.e. no followed/no index in meta robots etc)

        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.

        Staging & Development areas should be not indexable (i.e. no followed/no index in meta robots etc)

        Technical SEO
        3
        14
        5799
        Loading More Posts
        • Watching

          Notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread.

        • Not Watching

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread if category is not ignored.

        • Ignoring

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Do not show question in unread.

        • Oldest to Newest
        • Newest to Oldest
        • Most Votes
        Reply
        • Reply as question
        Locked
        This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
        • Dan-Lawrence
          Dan-Lawrence last edited by

          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

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • CleverPhD
            CleverPhD @Dan-Lawrence last edited by

            1. use robots.txt vs the meta tags - robots.txt is preferred.
            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • Dan-Lawrence
              Dan-Lawrence @CleverPhD last edited by

              I'm about to issue these instructions would appreciate it if you could quickly confirm covers your advice correctly and nothing missing:

              1) Setup a completely different GWT account unrelated to the main site, so that there is a new GWT account specific to the staging subdomain
              2) Add a robots.txt on the staging area subdomain site that disallows all pages and all crawlers OR use the noindex meta tag on all pages.  Its obviously very important when you update the main site it DOES NOTinclude or push out these files too (since that would result in main site or pages being de-indexed)3) Request removal of all pages in GWT.  Leave the form blank for the page to be removed since this will remove the entire site4) After about 1 month (or you see that the pages are all out of the serps), and google has spidered and seen the robots.txt, then put up a password on the entire staging site.Note:For brand new sites staging areas that don't yet exist or exist but are new and not yet showing up in the index then simply add a password for human access to prevent the above process being required in the future.

              CleverPhD 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • Dan-Lawrence
                Dan-Lawrence @CleverPhD last edited by

                Thanks for clarifying that CleverPHD & thanks again for all your help and great advice

                Have a great weekend !! 🙂

                All Best

                Dan

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • CleverPhD
                  CleverPhD @Dan-Lawrence last edited by

                  That is a completely valid question.   This is why setting up the separate GWT account for the dev.domain.ext vs www.domain.ext.   When you submit the removal request it will only be in the dev.domain.ext account.

                  The only thing you want to watch is that if you setup robots.txt in your dev environment you want to make sure that it does not get pushed out to your production server. That is the only gotcha as I see it.

                  Dan-Lawrence 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • Dan-Lawrence
                    Dan-Lawrence @CleverPhD last edited by

                    thanks !

                    as er my last question theres no risk of accidentally taking out the main site as part of this process ?

                    cheers

                    dan

                    CleverPhD 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • Dan-Lawrence
                      Dan-Lawrence @CleverPhD last edited by

                      Thanks so much for that great advice

                      just a bit worried about accidentally getting main site removed by accident, i take it so long as its a brand new GWT account for that specific subdomain then this cant happen ?

                      Cheers

                      Dan

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • CleverPhD
                        CleverPhD @CleverPhD last edited by

                        Here is a Google documentation on how to use the GWT to remove a page/directory/site and then the interaction with robots.txt

                        http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/03/url-removal-explained-part-i-urls.html

                        "In order for a directory or site-wide removal to be successful, the directory or site must be disallowed in the site's robots.txt file."

                        Side story.  I once had a subdomain that I needed to take out, but I could not modify the robots.txt file properly (long story).   So, we used the GWT tool and the meta noindex tag.  It still worked, but I think that would only be a backup approach to the one suggested by the documentation.

                        Dan-Lawrence 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 1
                        • CleverPhD
                          CleverPhD @anthonydnelson last edited by

                          Usually, this would be true that you would need to use the noindex tag to get things out of the SERPs and need to leave the robots.txt "open" to the crawlers.  But when you are working with the remove URL tool in GWT,they rx that you then put the site in robots.txt to keep them out of it

                          The removal tool in GWT takes care of Google taking the URLs out and then the robots.txt keeps the bots from coming back.  Just a different sequence than if you were to use the noindex meta.

                          CleverPhD 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                          • CleverPhD
                            CleverPhD @Dan-Lawrence last edited by

                            If you create the GWT account for the dev site and you submit for removal, GWT requires that you either a) have the site blocked in robots.tx or have a noindex meta tag on the pages. Otherwise they will just crawl you again later and you are back in the index.  See my post from earlier.

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                            • CleverPhD
                              CleverPhD @anthonydnelson last edited by

                              Short answer - no dev sites should be public to start with to anyone (let along Google et alia).  The simplest way is to put an htacess password on all your dev sites.  You can do a password per person in your company, or just one general one that everyone on the dev team shares.

                              If you do have a dev site in the Serps, the simplest way to get it out is to setup a GWT account for that subdomain and then e.g.  dev.yourdomain.ext  and then go into that account and request removal of all pages.  You just leave the form blank for the page to be removed and it takes out the whole site.  You then need a robots.txt on dev.yourdomain.ext (different from the www. version) that disallows all pages all crawlers - that or use the noindex meta tag on all page.

                              After about 1 month (or you see that the pages are all out of the serps), then I would put up a password on that entire site and be done with it.  Key point, dont put the password up until you let google try to spider and it sees the robots etc.

                              Also, if you have any other staging sites that are out there like  test.yourdomain.ext etc.  If they are not indexed, go ahead and put the password up on them to limit your exposure.

                              Public dev sites are the fastest way to get duplicate content into the index and to jack with the ranking of your current site.  It is key that all of them are locked down. If one of your developers say it is no big deal, call BS, it is a big deal and it can cause a big mess.

                              Dan-Lawrence 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                              • anthonydnelson
                                anthonydnelson last edited by

                                Hey Dan,

                                In this case, I would not exclude crawling via robots.txt. Perhaps later after you have verified the URLs are out of the index.

                                Just because Google can't crawl a page, doesn't mean they won't keep it in the index. Excluding crawling will not get a page out of the index.

                                Add the NOINDEX, FOLLOW tag you listed above and give it some time.

                                Use GWT if it's urgent or the information is sensitive.

                                CleverPhD 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • Dan-Lawrence
                                  Dan-Lawrence last edited by

                                  Thanks Anthony,

                                  The staging area already exists and is indexable as far as i can tell

                                  So i need to tell developers to  exclude crawling via robots.txt, add a no-index tag to head of each page but keep it followed so still crawlable i.e. within the Head section of every page on the dev area

                                  OR alternatively just remove urls from GWT)

                                  If excluding crawling via robots.txt file then why do you need to add a noindex tag to each page too, surely the robots.txt deals with this situation ?

                                  cheers

                                  dan

                                  CleverPhD 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                  • anthonydnelson
                                    anthonydnelson last edited by

                                    Ideally when creating a new staging area, you'd want to exclude crawling via robots.txt.

                                    Add the NoIndex tag to the head of your pages to get them removed from the SERPs. Make sure the page is still crawlable though, as if you exclude it in robots.txt first and then NoIndex it, Google won't be able to see the new NoIndex tag.

                                    If there are not a lot of pages to remove, you can request page removal within Google Webmaster Tools.

                                    CleverPhD 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                    • 1 / 1
                                    • First post
                                      Last post

                                    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.

                                    • See all categories

                                    Related Questions

                                    • Chris_Wright

                                      Removing a site from Google index with no index met tags

                                      Hi there! I wanted to remove a duplicated site from the google index. I've read that you can do this by removing the URL from Google Search console and, although I can't find it in Google Search console, Google keeps on showing the site on SERPs. So I wanted to add a "no index" meta tag to the code of the site however I've only found out how to do this for individual pages, can you do the same for a entire site? How can I do it? Thank you for your help in advance! L

                                      Technical SEO | | Chris_Wright
                                      1
                                    • AlisonMills

                                      Desktop & Mobile XML Sitemap Submitted But Only Desktop Sitemap Indexed On Google Search Console

                                      Hi! The Problem We have submitted to GSC a sitemap index. Within that index there are 4 XML Sitemaps. Including one for the desktop site and one for the mobile site. The desktop sitemap has 3300 URLs, of which Google has indexed (according to GSC) 3,000 (approx). The mobile sitemap has 1,000 URLs of which Google has indexed 74 of them. The pages are crawlable, the site structure is logical. And performing a Landing Page URL search (showing only Google/Organic source/medium) on Google Analytics I can see that hundreds of those mobile URLs are being landed on. A search on mobile for a longtail keyword from a (randomly selected) page shows a result in the SERPs for the mobile page that judging by GSC has not been indexed. Could this be because we have recently added rel=alternate tags on our desktop pages (and of course corresponding canonical ones on mobile). Would Google then 'not index' rel=alternate page versions? Thanks for any input on this one. PmHmG

                                      Technical SEO | | AlisonMills
                                      0
                                    • ccox1

                                      My Homepage Won't Load if Javascript is Disabled. Is this an SEO/Indexation issue?

                                      Hi everyone, I'm working with a client who recently had their site redesigned. I'm just going through to do an initial audit to make sure everything looks good. Part of my initial indexation audit goes through questions about how the site functions when you disable, javascript, cookies, and/or css. I use the Web Developer extension for Chrome to do this. I know, more recently, people have said that content loaded by Javascript will be indexed. I just want to make sure it's not hurting my clients SEO. http://americasinstantsigns.com/ Is it as simple as looking at Google's Cached URL? The URL is definitely being indexed and when looking at the text-only version everything appears to be in order. This may be an outdated question, but I just want to be sure! Thank you so much!

                                      Technical SEO | | ccox1
                                      0
                                    • kirmeliux

                                      Removing CSS & JS Files from Index

                                      Hi, Google has indexed a few .CSS and .JS files that belong to our WordPress plugins and themes. I had them blocked via robots, but realized this doesn't prevent indexation (and can likely hurt us since Google wants to access these files). I've since removed the robots instructions, submitted a removal request via Search Console, but want to make sure they don't come back. Is there a way to put a noindex tag within .CSS and .JS files? Or should I do something with .htaccess instead?

                                      Technical SEO | | kirmeliux
                                      1
                                    • jmueller

                                      Two META Robots tags on a page - which will win?

                                      Hi, Does anybody know which meta-robots tag will "win" if there is more than one on a page? The situation:
                                      our CMS is not very flexible and so we have segments of META-Tags on the page that originate from templates.
                                      Now any author can add any meta-tag from within his article-editor.
                                      The logic delivering the pages does not care if there might be more than one meta-robots tag present (one from template, one from within the article). Now we could end up with something like this: Which one will be regarded by google & co?
                                      First?
                                      Last?
                                      None? Thanks a lot,
                                      Jan

                                      Technical SEO | | jmueller
                                      0
                                    • danielpett

                                      SEO plugin by Yoast messing up my title/meta description

                                      Hey guys, I'm having some issues with my wordpress blog, and I believe SEO plugin by Yoast could be the one causing it. I have set a title for my wordpress blog, and a tagline. This was set in dashboard > settings > general Under "titles and metas" > home in the plugin it says, title: %%sitename%% %%page%% %%sep%% %%sitedesc%%, and meta description is blank. The reports on seomoz says my title is title+meta description - making it to long (to many characters). What could be the issue here? Thanks in advance!

                                      Technical SEO | | danielpett
                                      0
                                    • MarkWill

                                      Redirecting blog.<mydomain>.com to www.<mydomain>.com\blog</mydomain></mydomain>

                                      This is more of a technical question than pure SEO per se, but I am guessing that some folks here may have covered this and so I would appreciate any questions. I am moving from a WordPress.com-based blog (hosted on WordPress) to a WordPress installation on my own server (as suggested by folks in another thread here). As part of this I want to move from the format blog.<mydomain>.com to www.mydomain.com\blog. I have installed WordPress on my server and have imported posts from the hosted site to my own server. How should I manage the transition from first format to the second? I have a bunch of links on Facebook, etc that refer to URLs of the blog..com format so it's important that I redirect.</mydomain> I am running DotNetNuke/WordPress on my own IIS/ASP.Net servers. Thanks. Mark

                                      Technical SEO | | MarkWill
                                      0
                                    • christinarule

                                      Do search engines still index/crawl private content?

                                      If you have a membership site, which requires a payment to access specific content/images/videos, do search engines still use that content as a ranking/domain authority factor? Is it worth optimizing these "private" pages for SEO?

                                      Technical SEO | | christinarule
                                      1

                                    Get started with Moz Pro!

                                    Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                                    Start my free trial
                                    Products
                                    • Moz Pro
                                    • Moz Local
                                    • Moz API
                                    • Moz Data
                                    • STAT
                                    • Product Updates
                                    Moz Solutions
                                    • SMB Solutions
                                    • Agency Solutions
                                    • Enterprise Solutions
                                    • Digital Marketers
                                    Free SEO Tools
                                    • Domain Authority Checker
                                    • Link Explorer
                                    • Keyword Explorer
                                    • Competitive Research
                                    • Brand Authority Checker
                                    • Local Citation Checker
                                    • MozBar Extension
                                    • MozCast
                                    Resources
                                    • Blog
                                    • SEO Learning Center
                                    • Help Hub
                                    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                                    • How-to Guides
                                    • Moz Academy
                                    • API Docs
                                    About Moz
                                    • About
                                    • Team
                                    • Careers
                                    • Contact
                                    Why Moz
                                    • Case Studies
                                    • Testimonials
                                    Get Involved
                                    • Become an Affiliate
                                    • MozCon
                                    • Webinars
                                    • Practical Marketer Series
                                    • MozPod
                                    Connect with us

                                    Contact the Help team

                                    Join our newsletter
                                    Moz logo
                                    © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                                    • Accessibility
                                    • Terms of Use
                                    • Privacy

                                    Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.