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  4. How to Disallow Tag Pages With Robot.txt

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How to Disallow Tag Pages With Robot.txt

Intermediate & Advanced SEO
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  • monster99
    monster99 last edited by Oct 31, 2012, 7:12 AM

    Hi i have a site which i'm dealing with that has tag pages for instant -

    http://www.domain.com/news/?tag=choice

    How can i exclude these tag pages (about 20+ being crawled and indexed by the search engines with robot.txt

    Also sometimes they're created dynamically so i want something which automatically excludes tage pages from being crawled and indexed.

    Any suggestions?

    Cheers,

    Mark

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • monster99
      monster99 @monster99 last edited by Nov 1, 2012, 11:24 PM Nov 1, 2012, 11:24 PM

      Hi Nakul, its Drupal

      Mark

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • NakulGoyal
        NakulGoyal @monster99 last edited by Nov 1, 2012, 11:21 PM Nov 1, 2012, 11:21 PM

        What CMS is it Mark ?

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • monster99
          monster99 @DeanAndrews last edited by Nov 1, 2012, 10:33 PM Nov 1, 2012, 10:33 PM

          Thanks, is there a way to test it out before actually implementing it with the site.

          The site is non-wordpress aswell.

          Cheers,

          Mark

          NakulGoyal monster99 2 Replies Last reply Nov 1, 2012, 11:24 PM Reply Quote 0
          • NakulGoyal
            NakulGoyal last edited by Oct 31, 2012, 3:15 PM Oct 31, 2012, 3:15 PM

            I agree. I would suggest adding the noindex on the pages and letting the bots crawl them. Blocking them would prevent future crawl of these pages, but I am guessing you would also want to remove the existing pages.

            Therefore add the noindex first, wait a few days and then add the disallow (Although technically if they are noindex, you don't really need the disallow).

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • DeanAndrews
              DeanAndrews last edited by Oct 31, 2012, 7:39 AM Oct 31, 2012, 7:39 AM

              Hi Mark

              If your using Wordpress then I would recommend SEO Yoast to resolve the tag issue. If not then I suggest you amend the robots.txt file to resolve.

              Here is an example:

              Disallow: /?tag=
              Disallow: /
              ?subcats=
              Disallow: /*?features_hash=

              NOTE:

              Be very careful when blocking search engines. Test and test again!

              monster99 1 Reply Last reply Nov 1, 2012, 10:33 PM Reply Quote 0
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