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hide my ebook from the search engines

by 2ndAccount
5 replies
hey guys & gals,

why is it that despite me having the following in my robots.txt:

Disallow: /mye-book.pdf

i am still able to find the ebook in the search engines results??

is there something else i should be doing to ensure nobody can pick up the book for free?
#ebook #engines #hide #search
  • Profile picture of the author Kevin Riley
    I only put my free reports up on a PDF, as I'm quite happy if someone "steals" those. But, with paid products, put them in a ZIP file and upload them that way. Keeps the spiders out.
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    Kevin Riley, long-time Warrior living in Osaka, Japan

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  • Profile picture of the author dsmpublishing
    I agree kevin i put mine in zip files too but not just for the reason of security but also to promote myself with a zip file i will include one of my free viral reports for people to read too and get quite a few sign ups from this method.

    sam
    X
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  • Profile picture of the author crispin
    Originally Posted by 2ndAccount View Post

    hey guys & gals,

    why is it that despite me having the following in my robots.txt:

    Disallow: /mye-book.pdf

    i am still able to find the ebook in the search engines results??

    is there something else i should be doing to ensure nobody can pick up the book for free?
    I'm pretty sure that robots.txt does not allow you to disallow a single file. You have
    to disallow a subdirectory, which includes your file to protect.
    in robots.txt:
    User-agent: *
    Disallow: /downloads/

    where your ebook is in the directory.

    /downloads/mye-book.pdf

    Note that disallowing a subdirectory in robots.txt tells the world "this is a secret directory",
    so put in a blank index.html or otherwise disallow directory listings as well.


    Or you could use something like dl-guard

    Crispin
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  • Profile picture of the author Brad Gosse
    htaccess will work if you put it into a protected folder that only allows access from authenticated users.
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    Free Clip Art
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  • Profile picture of the author bravegoat
    Why are you even linking to it? if it's just sitting in the directory google would not be able to know it's there and pick it up - so either your directory index is viewable (meaning I can get a list of files in it) or you have a link to the pdf from somewhere on your site, and google crawled it.

    Just my 2 cents...
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