Can/Does Google Crawl/Spider/Index Zip Files? If So How To Avoid THis?

[bb4h]

I want to upload some zip files to my domain but I dont want them to be crawled, spidered or indexed by google. I know they index pdf's and word docs. But do they do the same for zip files? If so, is there a way to avoid it?

[seobirk]

Try google webmaster tools. There you can submit your site and under site configuration create a robots.txt file where you can exclude the files you don't want to be indexed.

[webexpert00]

No!!! they don't index zip files in SERP. As I have never seen some zip file to be indexed by search engines. Because search engines do not want to fetch any such kind of information for the user which is not directly in the readable form.

[timpears]

Using robot.text file can stop search engine from indexing any page in your site from what I understand. Whenever I want to make a robot.text file I always have to Google it to get the instructions, but they are pretty easy to create.

[bb4h]

Thanks for the responses. As far as those who mentioned robo.txt, I'm not concerned about the indexing pages from my site. I just don't want them indexing a .zip file and the contents within the .zip file. Anyone ever have this happen to them or have a 100% positive answer on whether or not google indexes zip files or the files inside of them?

[seobirk]

If you do a small Google search on the same thing you asked you find that there are claims of people who have had this problem, so I guess they do index them.
In the robot.txt file you can just exclude your .zip files.

[bb4h]

Well its not exactly a site that I want to submit to google webmasters although the root domain has already been indexed but theres just a blank index.html page on there.

What if I double zipped the file for example if the file name where money.zip and i double zipped it to be money.zip.zip . Would this for sure avoid google indexing the content inside?

[timpears]

Check this out and see if this answers your question.
site:.zip - Google Search

It would look like a big NO to me. But check the URL for yourself.

[danclarkie]

Originally Posted by timpears

Check this out and see if this answers your question.
google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=site%3A.zip&btnG=Google+S earch]site:.zip - Google Search

It would look like a big NO to me. But check the URL for yourself.

That link doesn't prove anything!
for example:

google.com/webhp?hl=en#sclient=psy&hl=en&site=webhp&source=hp &q=site:.html&pbx=1&oq=site:.html&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&g s_sm=e&gs_upl=1385l3911l0l4518l10l8l0l0l0l0l202l94 9l3.4.1l8l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.&fp=6e03ab0 a8e706d4b&biw=1366&bih=667

Google doesn't index html files??!!?


But No as far as i know Google does not index .zip files.
They certainly don't unzip and read the contents of the files, I don't even know where to start with how wrong that is.