Excluding Your Site From Showing Up On Search Engines Or how to prevent stalkers from finding your personal site.

dodgerblue · April 16, 2005

Firstly, I suppose there are very few people here who would want to do this. Most people want their sites to be listed on search engines, and these are probably the ones thinking that I must have a loose screw or something. But if you use your site for personal blogging and want to keep it open to friends and yet prevent your privacy from being infringed upon, this is worth looking at.

What you need:

1. A text editor. Notepad works fine for me.

2. Coffee. (Not because you're going to stay up all night, but because I like to drink coffee for any and every reason possible )

Method One: Editing Your Meta Tags (Meta tags are what directs indexing bots to display about your page.)

1. Locate the html file which you want search engines to skip.

2. Right-click on the file and select "Edit".

3. The file should open in Notepad (or other text editor).

4. You should see the following tags in order:

<html> (this tells the browser that this file is a html file) followed by

<head> (where info like page title and css style goes) and then

<title> Some Title </title> (the words you see in the top of your browser) and then

<style> (your css style is defined between these tags) </style>

</head>

... rest of the code like <body> and closing </html> tag.

Your meta tags MUST go between the <head> and </head> tags.

5. Like so:

<head>

</head>

What the first meta tag really does is tell all search engine indexing bots not to index your page.

The second tag is specific to google bots.

You don't have to include both tags.

If you want your page not to be listed anywhere, include the first tag.

If you want your page not to be listed on google, but are fine with listing on other search engines, then include the second tag.

If you've got a meta tag fetish, you can include both tags.

6. Save your html file.

7. Upload to your server.

+ Note: If your page has never been uploaded onto the internet before, it will never get indexed. If you are uploading an edited version (an existing version of your page is online on your site), it will take effect the next time the indexing bot crawls your site (up to 2 months).

Method Two: Removing Via Google's Content Removal Page

The page can be found here: https://support.google.com/websearch/troubleshooter/3111061?rd=1

The directions for removal can be found on the page itself, so I shan't elaborate. It's relatively easier than the first method, but the downside is that it only affects google bots. If you were looking for total exclusion, you still have to go with Method One.

That's it! Hope this was useful.

++ Disclaimer: this tutorial in no way guarantees safety from all stalkers. It might put off the less determined (read: psychotic) ones, but if they come knocking at your door, I suggest you dial 911 first, then hide under your bed.

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Excluding Your Site From Showing Up On Search Engines Or how to prevent stalkers from finding your personal site.

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