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If I chose to select "block search engines but allow normal visitors", what will happen then:
1) My blog will no longer be searchable in any search engine, or
2) New posts will never appear in search engines, but deep links to posts and pages created before the search engine block will still be searchable?
The first one. It actually adds in some code into the HTML header that blocks the search engine spiders that obey those rules. When they rescan those previous pages, they will note thte block code and should remove those pages from teh index.
Now do note that not every search engine obeys that setting though. MSN and A9 come to mind as questionable.
Hope this helps,
-drmike
Thank you, dr. Mike. Yes your answer is helpful but not what I hoped for.
I would prefer nr. 2 as I feel particularly Google is a bit too effettice and I do not like seeing semiprivate comment discussions showing up on irrelevant search terms in Google searches.
My idea was this strategy: select "block search engines" , and in the future put things of informational value for the blog topic on external, searchable sites, then link to them instead of placing them within the blog account.
However, things of informational value for the blog topic already created and linked to from Google etc, should still be searchable and keep its Google position on certain search terms.
But now I realise that is not an option. Maybe there is another workaround anyway. Otherwise I might find one.
Anne
Maybe you can disable the syndication feeds after you "block search engines but allow normal visitors" from Dashboard -> Option - > Reading and choose "0") (Zero). Or before you publish an entry, disable the "Allow Ping" so it won't be sent to the search engines. But then again, I don't know if any of your posts will show up in your blog.
Maybe there is another workaround anyway.
I can think of some ways if you had the software and were hosted elsewhere actually. You'd have to do some code hacking though. Nothing comes to mind with being here though.
One thing that comes to mind is to offer an option to mark specific posts as visable to search engines. Would be moot though as they would still appear on the archive pages though.
@ knoizki,
I think if I selected Dashboard -> Option -> Reading, and then zero, no posts would show up, but it could be OK to disable Ping. However, I don't know if that would work.
@dr.Mike,
One thing that comes to mind is to offer an option to mark specific posts as visable to search engines.
sounds like a good idea.
Would be moot though as they would still appear on the archive pages though
I don't understand. Why would that be a problem?
The search engine spiders would still see them if they were on teh archive pages.
Aha yes, of course. Did not think of that.
Hey, I just read dr. mike's answer to the question:
"It actually adds in some code into the HTML header that blocks the search engine spiders that obey those rules. When they rescan those previous pages, they will note thte block code and should remove those pages from teh index."
I selected the "block search engines but allow normal visitors" option a while ago but the stats still show Google keywords. Why is that? Thanks for your help. :)
Could take upwards of a year to get pages fully removed from search engine databases. Usually they're completely gone within a month or two though.
And believe me, Yahoo China keeps everything, forever. I have a long-dead blog that is still entirely cached there. Some search engines disobey the request not to archive.
Funny that you mention that as I've just discovered in my log files this link from Yahoo where Yahoo picked up a 'nofollow' link to britgirl's site.
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ag1024
knoizki
pinkbuddha
