How and Why to Exclude Your WordPress Site Content from Google Search

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How and Why to Exclude Website Content from Google Search
Sometimes you need to exclude specific WordPress content or files from being indexed in Google search results. Index, or “indexing” before the emergence of Google and other search engines was a word mostly associated with books. It usually resides in the back of most books, which is why the dictionary defines it in this context as:

Index: An alphabetical list, such as that printed on the back of a book showing which page a subject, name, etc., is on.

Fast forward to 1995, during the Internet boom, we have services like ecuador phone number data search engine, and by 1997, Google search had radically changed the way we search for and access information on the Internet.

According to a survey conducted in January 2018, there are 1,805,260,010 (over 1.8 billion) websites on the Internet and many of these websites do not get visitors.

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What is Google Indexing?
There are several search engines with different indexing format , but popular search engines include, Google, Bing, and for privacy conscious people, duckduckgo.

Google indexing generally refers to the process of adding new web pages, including digital content such as documents, videos , and images, and storing them in its database. In other words, in order for your site's content to appear in Google search results, it must first be stored in Google's index.

Google is able to index all these pages and digital content using its spiders, crawlers or robots that repeatedly crawl different websites on the Internet. These robots and crawlers ( Googlebot in the case of Google bots) follow the instructions of the website owners on what to crawl and what to ignore during the crawl.

Why do websites need to be indexed?
In the digital age, it is almost impossible to navigate through billions of websites looking for a particular topic and content. It will be much easier if there is a tool to show us which sites are reliable, which content is useful and relevant to us. That is why Google exists and ranks websites in search results.

Indexing becomes an indispensable part of the functioning of search engines in general and Google in particular. It helps identify words and phrases that best describe a page and contributes to the overall positioning of pages and websites. To appear on the first page of Google, your website, including web pages and digital files such as videos, images and documents, must first be indexed.

Indexing is a preliminary step for websites to rank well on search engines in general and Google in particular. By using keywords, websites can be seen and discovered better after being indexed and ranked by search engines. This then opens the doors to more visitors, subscribers and potential customers for your website and business.

The best place to hide a dead body is the second page of Google.

Even if you have a lot of indexed pages, your sites will not automatically rank higher, if the content on those pages is also high quality, you can get a boost in terms of SEO.

Why and How to Block Search Engine from Indexing Content
While indexing is great for website owners and businesses, there are pages you may not want to show up in search results. You could also risk exposing sensitive files and content to the Internet. Without passwords or authentication, private content is at risk of exposure and unauthorized access if bots have free access to your website folders and files.

In the early 2000s, hackers used Google search to reveal credit card information from websites with simple search queries. This security flaw has been used by many hackers to steal card information from e-commerce websites.

Another recent security flaw occurred at box.com , a popular cloud storage system. The security flaw was discovered by Markus Neis, head of threat intelligence at Swisscom. He said that simple exploits of search engines including Google and Bing could expose confidential files and information of many companies and individual customers.

Cases like these happen online and can cause a loss of sales and revenue for business owners. For business, e-commerce and membership websites, it is of paramount importance to first block search indexing of sensitive content and private files and then probably put them behind a decent user authentication system.

Let's take a look at how you can control what content and files can be crawled and indexed by Google and other search engines.

Using Robots.txt for Images
Robots.txt is a file that sits at the root of your site and tells Google, Bing, and other search engine robots what to crawl and what not to crawl. The robots.txt file is typically used to control crawl traffic and web crawlers (mobile vs desktop) but may also be used to prevent images from appearing in Google search results.