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How Do I De-Index a Download Page?

by art72
3 replies
  • WEB DESIGN
    • |
Hiya,

I recently started laying out a Wordpress site and searched my website URL in "quotations" to see what content has been indexed?

It never really dawned on me, but I have a Free eBook opt-in with an Aweber form that automatically redirects to the "Thank-You Page" after opt-in for instant download access from my server.

Well being the download page is now indexed anyone who searches my site URL could easily by-pass the opt-in and grab the freebies. :confused:

Not so much a big deal, but for future reference, do I simple post these pages with a "no-index" - "no-follow" setting to prevent these pages from being visible?

I am using Optimize Press, and I believe in the "Page" options, I can simply check the "no-index" option, but will this solve my problem?

...and if so, How long does it take to get a page "de-indexed" from the SERP's?

Appreciate any insight.

All the Best,

Art
#deindex #download #page
  • Profile picture of the author andrejvasso
    For the future using the meta tag "no-index" should work,but once a page has been indexed you cant simply set "no-index" and wait. You have to ask Google to remove it:

    Remove a page or site from Google's search results - Webmaster Tools Help

    p.s. in order to avoid people accessing your freebies, you could also set a session variable once some1 submits his email to your aweber form and than on the thank you page you check if that variable is set. This way you can redirect all users who try to access your page directly. (this can of course also be bypassed, but the "usual" user wont know how.)
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    • Profile picture of the author art72
      Originally Posted by andrejvasso View Post

      For the future using the meta tag "no-index" should work,but once a page has been indexed you cant simply set "no-index" and wait. You have to ask Google to remove it:

      Remove a page or site from Google's search results - Webmaster Tools Help

      p.s. in order to avoid people accessing your freebies, you could also set a session variable once some1 submits his email to your aweber form and than on the thank you page you check if that variable is set. This way you can redirect all users who try to access your page directly. (this can of course also be bypassed, but the "usual" user wont know how.)
      Thanks a lot Andre...

      Definitely need to look into the aweber varible settings, and in the future I'll be sure to caution which pages I allow to be indexed.

      Thank-You,

      Art
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  • Profile picture of the author George Curtis
    art72,

    First of all...

    1) Open up a Google Webmaster Tools account.
    --Go to Sitemap configuration > Crawler access

    Here, you should click on the "Remove URL" tab and then submit your request to remove the URL from the search engines.

    2) In your robots.txt file... JUST KIDDING... some will tell you to ask bots not to crawl that page via the robots.txt file, but that just tells savvy free-loaders or competitors where to look. Leave that file alone.

    3) If you are using a sitemap plugin (such as Google XML sitemaps)... that is probably the culprit.

    Chances are... you did not link to the download page from a main page... but once you generated the download page (or post) it was created on the sitemap.

    Simply go into your Google XML Sitemap settings and go down to a section called "Exclude Posts". There, you can enter the ID number of the post or page you wish to exclude.

    Note: You can get the ID number of the page/post by going to that page/post and clicking on the "Get Shortlink" button and notating the number. (There are other ways to get the ID as well.)

    Good luck.
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    George-C

    THE BEST WORD-PRESS POPUP PLUGIN EVER RELEASED! - "MOW POP"

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