Noindex vs Disallow within a Sitemap

What is the use of using Noindex within a Sitemap?

[shaunm]

Hi,

I never heard of using 'noindex' within a sitemap. What is the difference between the 'disallow' and 'noindex' parameters?

Suppose I want to block a single URL in my website not to be crawled and indexed, which is the best way?

user-agent: googlebot
noindex: /fr/content.aspx

user-agent: googlebot
disallow: /fr/content.aspx


I just came across a website which uses both in their robots.txt file to make sure that their pages are not indexed in the search results.
[korinaithacahotel.com...]


I would very much appreciate your help guys. Thanks a lot!


Best,

[lucy24]

Short answer: the word 'noindex' is not part of the Robots Exclusion Standard. Use it at your own risk.

Disallow = robots stay out, no crawling allowed
Noindex = page is not mentioned in google's* search index

Yes, a page can be indexed even if a search engine has not seen it. They only have to know it exists.


* I say specifically google, because That Other Search Engine has indexed a few pages that are clearly and explicitly labeled noindex.

[phranque]

the problem with Noindex: in a robots exclusion protocol is that robots are for crawling, not indexing.


according to their documentation google only supports the Disallow: and Allow: directives in robots.txt.

Block or remove pages using a robots.txt file - Webmaster Tools Help:
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=156449 [support.google.com]

[shaunm]

@phranque
Thank you so much for answering! "robots are for crawling, not indexing" - It cannot be explained in any other words :)

Cheers!

[shaunm]

@lucy24

Thanks! After so much of research, I found that 'noindex' in a robots.txt is not a directive. But still I am very much confused since the 'robots.txt checkers' available online do not find the use of 'noindex' as an error and report to us, why is that?

And also whey you say "I say specifically google, because That Other Search Engine has indexed a few pages that are clearly and explicitly labeled noindex"

Do you refer to the NOINDEX in robots.txt or NOINDEX in Meta Tags?

Thanks again.

[shaunm]

And sorry about the mistyped 'Title'

The correct one is Noindex vs Disallow within a Robots.txt

:)

[lucy24]

Oops. I meant the "noindex" meta tag. It would never occur to me to say "noindex" in robots.txt. I don't even use "allow", since only a handful of robots recognize the word.

Incidentally, when I first saw the topic header I thought it was going to be the perennial unanswered question: how the bleepity bleep do you prevent g### from indexing your sitemap and robots.txt? :)

[phranque]

how the bleepity bleep do you prevent g### from indexing your sitemap and robots.txt?

you could always try using the X-Robots-Tag HTTP header:
http://developers.google.com/webmasters/control-crawl-index/docs/robots_meta_tag [developers.google.com]

[shaunm]

@lucy24

hahaha...yes it's all because of my wrong title. Good that you asked otherwise phranque would not have shared that resource link :)

Thanks both lucy24 and phranque for your detailed answering.

Cheers!