undefined
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
    • SEO Q&A
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • Case Studies
    • 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.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    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
    • 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.

    • Case Studies

      Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

    • 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
  • 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. Temporarily suspend Googlebot without blocking users

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.

Temporarily suspend Googlebot without blocking users

Technical SEO
4
7
2.4k
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as question
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
  • lzhao
    lzhao last edited by Aug 16, 2012, 9:51 AM

    We'll soon be launching a redesign, on a new platform, migrating millions of pages to new URLs.

    How can I tell Google (and other crawlers) to temporarily (a day or two) ignore my site?  We're hoping to buy ourselves a small bit of time to verify redirects and live functionality before allowing Google to crawl and index the new architecture.

    GWT's recommendation is to 503 all pages - including robots.txt, but that also makes the site invisible to real site visitors, resulting in significant business loss.  Bad answer.

    I've heard some recommendations to disallow all user agents in robots.txt.   Any answer that puts the millions of pages we already have indexed at risk is also a bad answer.

    Thanks

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • lzhao
      lzhao @lzhao last edited by Aug 21, 2012, 11:52 AM Aug 21, 2012, 11:52 AM

      So it seems like we've gone full circle.

      The initial question was, "How can I tell Google (and other crawlers) to temporarily (a day or two) ignore my site?  We're hoping to buy ourselves a small bit of time to verify redirects and live functionality before allowing Google to crawl and index the new architecture."

      Sounds like the answer is, 'that's not possible'.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Igal_Zeifman
        Igal_Zeifman @lzhao last edited by Aug 2, 2013, 6:06 PM Aug 21, 2012, 11:20 AM

        Putting a noindex/nofollow on an index url will remove it from SERPs, although some ulrs will still show for direct search (using the url itself as a KW) but even then they will appear as clear links without any TItle/Description details.

        Using a 301 redirect will remove the old page from index, regardless of noindex/nofollow.

        If you are using a noindex/nofollow for the new url - both will not show.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • lzhao
          lzhao @lzhao last edited by Aug 21, 2012, 7:53 AM Aug 21, 2012, 7:53 AM

          Thank you, Ruth!

          Can I ask a clarifying question?

          If I put a noindex/nofollow on the new urls, wouldn't the result be the same as if I put noindex/nofollow on the indexed urls?  There is only one instance of each page - and all of the millions of  indexed URLs will be redirecting to new urls.

          Here is my assumption:   if I put noindex/nofollow on the new urls - a search bot will crawl the old url, follow the redirect to the new url, detect the noindex/nofollow, and then drop the old, indexed url from their index.  Is that the wrong assumption?

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • RuthBurrReedy
            RuthBurrReedy @lzhao last edited by Aug 17, 2012, 6:49 PM Aug 17, 2012, 6:49 PM

            I would use robots.txt to noindex the whole website as well - but just the new pages, not the old ones. Then when you're ready to be crawled, remove the robots.txt entry and Fetch as Googlebot to get re-crawled.  You may fall out of the index for a day or two but should quickly be re-indexed.

            Another solution would be to use the meta robots tag to individually noindex each page (if there's a way to do that in your CMS, obviously adding them by hand wouldn't be scalable), and then remove.  That may increase your chances of getting re-crawled and re-indexed sooner.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • lzhao
              lzhao @Intergen last edited by Aug 16, 2012, 11:18 PM Aug 16, 2012, 11:18 PM

              Thanks for the response, Mark.

              It sounds as if you tried this on a few new pages.

              I'm talking about millions of existing pages.

              Would you robots.txt noindex your entire website?   Seems like you'd run a huge risk of being dumped from the index entirely.

              RuthBurrReedy lzhao Igal_Zeifman 4 Replies Last reply Aug 21, 2012, 11:52 AM Reply Quote 0
              • Intergen
                Intergen last edited by Aug 16, 2012, 6:27 PM Aug 16, 2012, 6:27 PM

                I recommend robots text noindex, nofollow.

                That way people can still see the pages they just aren't indexed in Google yet.

                As we developed some new pages on one of our sites we did this and we could still view pages and send folks there that we wanted to see the content for feedback - but no one else knew they were there.

                lzhao 1 Reply Last reply Aug 16, 2012, 11:18 PM Reply Quote 0
                • 1 / 1
                1 out of 7
                • First post
                  1/7
                  Last post

                Got a burning SEO question?

                Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                Start my free trial


                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

                • AKCAC

                  GoogleBot still crawling HTTP/1.1 years after website moved to HTTP/2

                  google http https indexation crawl

                  Whole website moved to https://www. HTTP/2 version 3 years ago. When we review log files, it is clear that - for the home page - GoogleBot continues to only access via HTTP/1.1 protocol Robots file is correct (simply allowing all and referring to https://www. sitemap Sitemap is referencing https://www. pages including homepage Hosting provider has confirmed server is correctly configured to support HTTP/2 and provided evidence of accessing via HTTP/2 working 301 redirects set up for non-secure and non-www versions of website all to https://www. version Not using a CDN or proxy GSC reports home page as correctly indexed (with https://www. version canonicalised) but does still have the non-secure version of website as the referring page in the Discovery section. GSC also reports homepage as being crawled every day or so. Totally understand it can take time to update index, but we are at a complete loss to understand why GoogleBot continues to only go through HTTP/1.1 version not 2 Possibly related issue - and of course what is causing concern - is that new pages of site seem to index and perform well in SERP ... except home page. This never makes it to page 1 (other than for brand name) despite rating multiples higher in terms of content, speed etc than other pages which still get indexed in preference to home page. Any thoughts, further tests, ideas, direction or anything will be much appreciated!

                  Technical SEO | May 13, 2024, 8:42 AM | AKCAC
                  1
                • EverettChen

                  Does user engagement or content of pages requiring login help SEO?

                  Hi! Our company is trying to come up  with a few pages with some manuals to teach our users how to use our products. However, these pages require username and password. My understanding is that user engagement will help a website's keyword rankings and Google will not be able to crawl or have access to pages requiring login as it doesn't have username and password. Based on that idea, does that mean all the content and user engagement on those pages requiring login won't help our overall SEO? Thanks in advance!

                  Technical SEO | Dec 25, 2019, 12:24 AM | EverettChen
                  0
                • imaginex

                  Should I block Map pages with robots.txt?

                  Hello, I have a website that was started in 1999. On the website I have map pages for each of the offices listed on my site, for which there are about 120. Each of the 120 maps is in a whole separate html page. There is no content in the page other than the map. I know all of the offices love having the map pages so I don't want to remove the pages. So, my question is would these pages with no real content be hurting the rankings of the other pages on our site? Therefore, should I block the pages with my robots.txt? Would I also have to remove these pages (in webmaster tools?) from Google for blocking by robots.txt to really work? I appreciate your feedback, thanks!

                  Technical SEO | Oct 29, 2014, 3:37 PM | imaginex
                  0
                • zeepartner

                  Google indexing despite robots.txt block

                  Hi This subdomain has about 4'000 URLs indexed in Google, although it's blocked via robots.txt: https://www.google.com/search?safe=off&q=site%3Awww1.swisscom.ch&oq=site%3Awww1.swisscom.ch This has been the case for almost a year now, and it does not look like Google tends to respect the blocking in http://www1.swisscom.ch/robots.txt Any clues why this is or what I could do to resolve it? Thanks!

                  Technical SEO | May 7, 2014, 2:14 PM | zeepartner
                  0
                • zeepartner

                  Block Domain in robots.txt

                  Hi. We had some URLs that were indexed in Google from a www1-subdomain. We have now disabled the URLs (returning a 404 - for other reasons we cannot do a redirect from www1 to www) and blocked via robots.txt. But the amount of indexed pages keeps increasing (for 2 weeks now). Unfortunately, I cannot install Webmaster Tools for this subdomain to tell Google to back off... Any ideas why this could be and whether it's normal? I can send you more domain infos by personal message if you want to have a look at it.

                  Technical SEO | Jul 8, 2013, 8:16 AM | zeepartner
                  0
                • AndreVanKets

                  OK to block /js/ folder using robots.txt?

                  I know Matt Cutts suggestions we allow bots to crawl css and javascript folders (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNEipHjsEPU) But what if you have lots and lots of JS and you dont want to waste precious crawl resources? Also, as we update and improve the javascript on our site, we iterate the version number ?v=1.1... 1.2... 1.3... etc. And the legacy versions show up in Google Webmaster Tools as 404s. For example: http://www.discoverafrica.com/js/global_functions.js?v=1.1
                  http://www.discoverafrica.com/js/jquery.cookie.js?v=1.1
                  http://www.discoverafrica.com/js/global.js?v=1.2
                  http://www.discoverafrica.com/js/jquery.validate.min.js?v=1.1
                  http://www.discoverafrica.com/js/json2.js?v=1.1 Wouldn't it just be easier to prevent Googlebot from crawling the js folder altogether? Isn't that what robots.txt was made for? Just to be clear - we are NOT doing any sneaky redirects or other dodgy javascript hacks. We're just trying to power our content and UX elegantly with javascript. What do you guys say: Obey Matt? Or run the javascript gauntlet?

                  Technical SEO | Mar 16, 2012, 12:28 PM | AndreVanKets
                  0
                • sesertin

                  Urls with or without .html ending

                  Hello, Can anyone show me some authority info on wheher links are better with or without a .html ending? Thanks is advance

                  Technical SEO | Nov 2, 2011, 9:23 PM | sesertin
                  0
                • kchandler

                  Block a sub-domain from being indexed

                  This is a pretty quick and simple (i'm hoping) question. What is the best way to completely block a sub domain from getting indexed from all search engines? One item i cannot use is the meta "no follow" tag. Thanks! - Kyle

                  Technical SEO | Aug 25, 2011, 5:24 AM | kchandler
                  0

                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
                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.