how to temporary block Googlebot

with a new site - preventing duplicate content

[Istvan]

I would like to know it is possible to put a text as deny all in the robots.txt to avoid duplicate content penalties while testing a new product with the content of a live "old site".

Any insights on how this should be done, so that when we launch the new product/site and remove the (deny all) from the robots.txt and do a redirect from the old site (301/302?) to the new site, that in fact the new site will be indexed this time and not avoided?

Istvan

[edited by: Istvan at 9:29 am (utc) on Nov. 15, 2006]