Block Google from seeing Bing/Yahoo SEOed pages and their inbound links

[Oimachi2]

Hi there,

Google is so all over the place that I'd rather get the other 20% traffic from Yahoo and Bing that converts wayyyyyyyyyy better by the way.

So how about creating pages for Yahoo and Bing?

Can use good old tactics like anchor text and link building without fear of being banned...

Is there a way to do that so that Google doesn't even know the page exists?

What if I had a domain name called:

example.com and created a page called:

example.com/a.html

Then I created 1000 links to a.html

Is there a kind of web bot that would make Google ignore that page altogether but let Yahoo and Bing that is DOES exist?

[phranque]

<meta name="googlebot" content="noindex">

[aakk9999]

<meta name="googlebot" content="noindex">

True for page not appearing in Google index, but Google would still know about it and the 1000 links would flow to the rest of the site via this noindexed page.

The way I understood the question, I think Oimachi2 wants to completely hide that page from Google, so that links tactics that he says works for Yahoo/Bing and he wishes to employ would not flow to the rest of the site (so that it is not damaging for the rest of the site Google is allowed to see).

On top of my head - this is not possible without cloaking user agents and serving Google 404 whilst serving visitors and Yahoo/Bing 200. And I would not recommend this.

[Shepherd]

Can use good old tactics like anchor text and link building without fear of being banned...

I like your idea, however you would have to set up a separate site, not just pages, to do this effectively. Here's the problem, google is penalizing specific keywords used/abused by anchor text. Even if you block google from the pages you site is still going to have those links pointing to it, links that google is going to be able to see.

[phranque]

you really have only 3 choices:

1.

<meta name="googlebot" content="noindex,nofollow">

"don't look, google"
(links wouldn't flow to the rest of the site; url/content won't appear in the index)

2.

User-Agent: googlebot
Disallow: /a.html

"you're not allowed to look, google"
(links wouldn't flow to the rest of the site; url might appear in the index, but not content)

3.

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} googlebot [NC]
RewriteRule ^a\.html$ - [G]

"there's nothing to see, google"
(links wouldn't flow to the rest of the site; url/content won't appear in the index; user agent cloaking is risky)


it's not like there's anything you can do about google discovering the links to your domain, unless your link building effort includes preventing googlebot from discovering or following links to your site.

[JD_Toims]

.htaccess

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} google [NC]
RewriteRule ^the-page\.ext$ - [F]

[Oimachi2]

Hi Phranque,

Thanks for the excellent information, is that 100% safe and for sure?

So #1 is the best choice I think?

I plan to put anchor links that relate to my industry and link to sub pages of my site. SEO the good old way. Telling search engines what your site is about, and delivering what you promised ;)

[McMohan]

Granted there is hardly anything that one can do to prevent Google from discovering backlinks, but if a page is out of bounds for Google, how could Google be bothered about the links pointing to that page? The very premise of Penguin is to discourage websites from influencing ranks by getting links that are not natural. When there is no page to influence Google ranks with, how does it matter what sort of links that page has?

[lucy24]

Question from a different angle: If you are only concerned with how a page looks to search engines #2 through #99, why does it have to be kept out of google at all, whether by 403 or noindex or "Sorry, we've already rented that apartment" or "Pay no attention to the elephant"?

:: detour to read OP three times over ::

Are we looking at two parallel sites under the same domain name, one for google and one for everyone else? And the "everyone else" pages would be actively harmful to pages in the google-permitted area? I can't see any other reason for concealment.

[Oimachi2]

Same site, same domain

Same root domain name, different html documents for Bing only.

[frankiee]

If you are only focused on receiving converting traffic from Bing & Yahoo and don't want Google to know about your page at all why are you worried about being penalized?

[jakebohall]

Why don't you just create a domain or subdomain that you optimize separately/specifically for bing/yahoo..

[Dymero]

You say that Bing/Yahoo are so different in their ranking factors that it'd make a difference, but are they really? Maybe five or six years ago, but now?

You speak of building links and using anchor text, but Google doesn't have a problem with that unless you're buying links or trying to manipulate rankings. I can't think that Bing doesn't also look for these things as aggressively as Google.