Is <meta content=noindex, nofollow> retroactive?

Google spidered pages I don't want to have there...

[rincey]

I added a "print me" link to my CMS few days ago which displays a content-only version of every page without navigation and ads, optimized for print out.

Now I just saw that Google spidered all 27k of this pages too (although the URL is a .php with 4 parameters) and dropped some of the original "real" pages.

I added a <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW"> now to every print page, just as Google recommends but wonder if this is retroactive? Will this lead Google to drop the printout pages again even when they are already in the index?

Sometimes I just can't believe how silly I am :(

Thanks,
Ad

[Brett_Tabke]

Yes they will drop it from the index - eventually. However, don't be surprised if they still crawl it. They also tend to ignore the "nofollow" item.