How Not To Index Your PDF In Google

You can use a robots.txt file

That's right, use a robots.txt file.

If you're not familiar with that then here is an explanation.

Create file called robots.txt in a plain text editor.

Then add
Disallow: /foldername/filename.html

Upload it to your server with an ftp program

You could also take the first paragraph or so and post it to your blog. Then have a link that says, "Download the entire file" and have it go to the PDF file. Before doing this zip the PDF file into a .zip file. Google can read PDF files but she can't read files that are zipped. --Mike

Thank you for the responses

The big G is smart enough to read pdf files which you surely know by now. You can also just put your downloadable pdf into a zip file. I find that better as well because then when the user clicks the direct link they will automatically be prompted to download. Browsers cannot read a zip file. Instead of having the pdf open within the browser and having to give the users instructions on how to save it to their desktop, it'll automatically prompt them to download that file whether they left or right click it. It's a simple workaround.

Be thankful you're aware of it. There are many product owners who don't know the big G is giving away their download pdfs for free in the search engines without signup and/or buying.

Like already said, zip the pdf, problem solved.

You make sitemap or robot.txt file for this...

However, Google will ignore the robot.txt file on a PDF if the PDF is found in a link from another site.

This happened to us and Google decided to kill all of our keywords and replace them with words from the PDF file.

The fix was to either (as suggested above) .zip the file to kill both the link from another site AND so Google couldn't see the PDF. This doesn't work if you want your customer to be able to see the PDF file without having to spend the time and yours/his bandwidth to download it.

The solution was to ask Google in Webmaster tools to remove the entire link to the PDF file and to upload the PDF to box.net which allows the user to still see and download the PDF but Google can't destroy your keywords with it.

BTW, this is a great way to completely destroy a competitors SEO if they host their own PDFs. You'd think as sharp as Google is they would find a way to fix this issue.

It took about 5-7 days and Google finally removed the PDF from their search and our old keywords were back and so were our rankings. Hope this helps...

Hi

That's right, use a robots.txt file.And Create file called robots.txt in a plain text editor.and upload root folder.