The Answer To This Interview Question:
To prevent pages from being indexed, the most reliable method is using the noindex meta tag. This explicitly instructs search engines not to index a page. While you can block pages using the robots.txt file, this only prevents crawling and doesn’t guarantee the page won’t be indexed if the URL is already known to Google. It’s important to combine these methods correctly to ensure the desired result.
What The Interviewer Really Wants To Hear:
The interviewer is looking to see if you understand the different methods for managing a website’s visibility in search engines and their limitations.
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Tips To Answer This Interview Question Successfully
Explain the correct usage of the noindex tag vs. robots.txt.
The noindex tag should be used for pages that you don’t want to appear in search results at all, like thank-you pages or login portals. Robots.txt blocks crawlers but doesn’t prevent indexing, so it’s best suited for preventing bots from crawling low-priority areas like internal files or scripts.
Explain when it’s appropriate to use robots.txt vs. a robots meta noindex tag.
Robots.txt is great for preventing crawling of sections like internal admin files, but if you want to prevent pages from being indexed, especially if they’ve already been crawled, a noindex tag should be added to the page itself to ensure it doesn’t appear in search results.
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