×
Friday, March 29, 2024

Google Explains How To Hide A Website From Search Results - Search Engine Journal

Last updated Wednesday, November 24, 2021 15:06 ET , Source: NewsService

See which organic keywords actually drive conversions

Replace (not provided) with actual keywords and monitor their specific performance metrics in Google Analytics. Stop flying blind on essential SEO insights.

Try For Free

Google says the best way to hide a website from search results is with a password, but there are other options you can consider.

This subject is spotlighted in the latest installment of the Ask Googlebot video series on YouTube.

Google’s John Mueller responds to a question asking how to prevent content from getting indexed in search, and whether that’s something websites are allowed to do.

“In short, yes you can,” Mueller says.

There are three ways to hide a website from search results:

  • Use a password
  • Block crawling
  • Block indexing

Websites can either opt out of indexing altogether, or they can get indexed and hide content from Googlebot by using a password.

Blocking content from Googlebot is not against webmaster guidelines, as long as it’s blocked to users at the same time.

For example, if the site is password protected when crawled by Googlebot, it must be password protected to users as well.

Alternately, the site must have directives in place to stop Googlebot from crawling or indexing the site.

Where you can run into trouble is if your website serves different content to Googlebot than it does to users.

That’s called “cloaking” and is against Google’s guidelines.

With that distinction made, here are the correct ways to go about hiding content...



Read Full Story: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-explains-how-to-hide-a-website-from-search-results/428341/

Your content is great. However, if any of the content contained herein violates any rights of yours, including those of copyright, please contact us immediately by e-mail at media[@]kissrpr.com.