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
      • 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.

      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
      • 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
    • 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. Removing CSS & JS Files from Index

    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.

    Removing CSS & JS Files from Index

    Technical SEO
    4
    8
    2886
    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.
    • kirmeliux
      kirmeliux last edited by

      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?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • kirmeliux
        kirmeliux @Niels.V last edited by

        I figured .htaccess would be the best route. Thank you for researching and confirming. I appreciate it.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • kirmeliux
          kirmeliux @TimHolmes last edited by

          Hi Tim,

          Assigning a noindex tag to these files will not block them, only prevent them from showing in SERPs. This is the intended goal and the reason I deleted my robots.txt file which prevented crawling.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Niels.V
            Niels.V @TimHolmes last edited by

            There's quite a big difference between crawling directives, which block and indexing directives. This article by (former?) Moz user S_ebastian_ is a good foundation read.

            This article at developers.google.com is a good second read. If I'm understanding it right, Google thinks in terms of crawling directives vs indexing / serving directives.

            My attempt at <tl rl="">:</tl>

            crawling = looking, using in any way :: controlled via robots.txt

            indexing / serving = indexing, archiving, displaying snippets in results, etc :: controlled via html meta tags or web server htaccess (or similar for other web servers).

            I'm not convinced yet, that asking for noindex via htaccess causes the same sort of grief that deny in robots.txt causes.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • TimHolmes
              TimHolmes last edited by

              I would seriously think again when it comes to blocking/no-indexing your CSS and JS files - Google has in the past stated that if they cannot fully render your site properly then this could lead to poorer rankings.

              You will also likely get notifications in your Search Console as errors for this too.

              Check out this great article from July this year which goes into more details. 

              Niels.V kirmeliux 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • Niels.V
                Niels.V @kirmeliux last edited by

                I haven't encountered undesirable .css or .js indexing myself (yet), but as you surmised, maybe this htaccess directive might be worth trying?

                <filesmatch ".(txt|log|xml|css|js)$"="">Header set X-Robots-Tag "noindex"</filesmatch>

                Google seems to support it

                kirmeliux 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                • kirmeliux
                  kirmeliux @Mobilio last edited by

                  Unless I'm severely misreading the links provided, which I've read before, it seems Google is stating that they read, render, and sometimes index .CSS and .JS files. Here's an article written a week after the second article you posted.

                  The aforementioned WordPress plugin and theme files hosted on my server are indeed showing up in Google SERPs.

                  I do not want to prevent Googlebot from reaching these files as they're needed for optimal site performance, but I do want them to be no-indexed. Thus, I don't want robots.txt to prevent crawling, only indexing.

                  Let me know if I'm misunderstanding.

                  Niels.V 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • Mobilio
                    Mobilio last edited by

                    TL;DR - You're hesitated about problem that doesn't exist.

                    Googlebot doesn't index CSS or JS files. They index text files, HTML, PDF, DOC, XLS, etc. But doesn't index style sheets or javascript files.

                    All you need in WordPress is to create blank robots.txt file where WP is installed with this content:

                    User-agent: *
                    Disallow:
                    Sitemap: http://site/sitemap-file-name.xml

                    And that's all. This is explain many times:

                    http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.bg/2014/05/understanding-web-pages-better.html
                    http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.bg/2014/10/updating-our-technical-webmaster.html

                    kirmeliux 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote -1
                    • 1 / 1
                    • First post
                      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

                    • akashkandari

                      Discovered - currently not indexed issue

                      Hello all, We have a sitemap with URLs that have mostly user generated content. Profile Overview section. Where users write about their services and some other things. Out of 46K URLs, only 14K are valid according to search console and 32K URLs are excluded. Out of these 32K, 28K are "Discovered - currently not indexed". We can't really update these pages as they have user generated content. However we do want to leverage all these pages to help us in our SEO. So the question is how do we make all of these pages indexable? If anyone can help in the regard, please let me know. Thanks!

                      Technical SEO | | akashkandari
                      0
                    • Tom3_15

                      Google is indexing bad URLS

                      Hi All, The site I am working on is built on Wordpress. The plugin Revolution Slider was downloaded. While no longer utilized, it still remained on the site for some time. This plugin began creating hundreds of URLs containing nothing but code on the page. I noticed these URLs were being indexed by Google. The URLs follow the structure: www.mysite.com/wp-content/uploads/revslider/templates/this-part-changes/ I have done the following to prevent these URLs from being created & indexed: 1. Added a directive in my Htaccess to 404 all of these URLs 2. Blocked /wp-content/uploads/revslider/ in my robots.txt 3. Manually de-inedex each URL using the GSC tool 4. Deleted the plugin However, new URLs still appear in Google's index, despite being blocked by robots.txt and resolving to a 404. Can anyone suggest any next steps? I Thanks!

                      Technical SEO | | Tom3_15
                      0
                    • cokergroup

                      Z-indexed content

                      I have some content on a page that I am not using any type of css hiding techniques, but I am using an image with a higher z-index in order to prevent the text from being seen until a user clicks a link to have the content scroll down. Are there any negative repercussions for doing this in regards to SEO?

                      Technical SEO | | cokergroup
                      0
                    • Silkstream

                      Why is my blog disappearing from Google index?

                      My Google blogger blog is about 10 months old. In that time i have worked really hard with adding unique content, building relationships with other bloggers in the same niche, and done some inbound marketing. 2 weeks ago I updated the template to something cleaner, with a little more "wordpress" feel to it. This means i've messed about with the code a lot in these weeks, adding social buttons etc. The problem is that from some point late last week thurs/fri my pages started disappearing from Googles index. I have checked webmaster tools and have no manual actions. My link profile is pretty clean as its a new site, and i have manually checked every piece of content published for plagiarism etc. So what is going on? Did i break my blog? Or is something else amiss? Impressions are down 96% comparing Nov 1-5th to previous 5 days. site is here: http://bit.ly/174beVm Thanks for any help in advance.

                      Technical SEO | | Silkstream
                      0
                    • CommercePundit

                      Image Indexing Issue by Google

                      Hello All,My URL is: www.thesalebox.comI have Submitted my image Sitemap in google webmaster tool on 10th Oct 2013,Still google could not indexing any of my web images,Please refer my sitemap - www.thesalebox.com/AppliancesHomeEntertainment.xml and www.thesalebox.com/Hardware.xmland my webmaster status and image indexing status are below, Can you please help me, why my images are not indexing in google yet? is there any issue? please give me suggestions?Thanks!

                      Technical SEO | | CommercePundit
                      0
                    • inlinear

                      Correct linking to the /index of a site and subfolders: what's the best practice? link to: domain.com/ or domain.com/index.html ?

                      Dear all, starting with my .htaccess file: RewriteEngine On
                      RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.inlinear.com$ [NC]
                      RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://inlinear.com/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.html 
                      RewriteRule ^(.)index.html$ http://inlinear.com/ [R=301,L] 1. I redirect all URL-requests with www. to the non www-version...
                      2. all requests with "index.html" will be redirected to "domain.com/" My questions are: A) When linking from a page to my frontpage (home) the best practice is?: "http://domain.com/" the best and NOT: "http://domain.com/index.php" B) When linking to the index of a subfolder "http://domain.com/products/index.php" I should link also to: "http://domain.com/products/" and not put also the index.php..., right? C) When I define the canonical ULR, should I also define it just: "http://domain.com/products/" or in this case I should link to the definite file: "http://domain.com/products**/index.php**" Is A) B) the best practice? and C) ? Thanks for all replies! 🙂
                      Holger

                      Technical SEO | | inlinear
                      0
                    • ocelot

                      Duplicate content problem from an index.php file

                      Hi One of my sites is flagging a duplicate content problem which is affecting the search rankings. The duplicate problem is caused by http://www.mydomain.com/index.php which has a page rank of 26 How can I sort the duplicate content problem, as the main page should just be http://www.mydomain.com which has a page rank of 42 and is the stronger page with stronger links etc Many Thanks

                      Technical SEO | | ocelot
                      0
                    • Websensejim

                      Why has Google removed meta descriptions from SERPS?

                      One of my clients' sites has just been redesigned with lots of new URLs added. So the 301 redirections have been put in place and most of the new URLs have now been indexed. BUT Google is still showing all the old URLs in the SERPS and even worse it only displays the title tag. The meta description is not shown, no rich snippet, no text, nothing below the title. This is proving disastrous as visitors are not clicking on a result with no description. I have to assume its got something to do with the redirection, but why is it not showing the descriptions? I've checked the old URLs and he meta description is definitely still in the code, but Google is choosing not to show it. I've never seen this before so I'm struggling for an answer. I'd like to know why or how this is happening, and if it can be resolved. I realise that this may be resolved when Google stops showing all the old URLs but there's no telling how long that will take (can it be speeded up?)

                      Technical SEO | | Websensejim
                      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.