Metatags For Dynamic Search Results Pages

[MaryP]

Where can we put the <noindex> metatag for the dynamically-generated search results pages? Google keeps indexing our search results pages. Thank you!

[nadeem]

You can add an entry to the robots.txt file (inside website root directory) to prevent search result page from indexing.

Locate the following

Code: Select all

Disallow: /BuyProduct.ashx

and replace with the below code (if your search results page becomes something like /search.aspx?k=somekeyword)

Code: Select all

Disallow: /BuyProduct.ashx
Disallow: /?k=

[MaryP]

Thanks, we have tried that and it seems that more search strings keep coming up, such as /?c=, /?m=, etc. Google doesn't like seeing a large robots.txt file, so we were trying to follow Google's recommendation of adding the <noindex> metatag,

[nadeem]

Ok. Then you can add the meta tag dynamically to the specific pages you don't want to index. Put the following code to the Page_Load method

Code: Select all

// ADD NOINDEX META TAG TO PREVENT BROWSERS FROM INDEXING THE PAGE
HtmlMeta keyword = new HtmlMeta();
keyword.Name = "robots";
keyword.Content = "noindex";
Page.Header.Controls.Add(keyword);

You also have to add the following using statement at the top of the page.

Code: Select all

using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls;

[Brewhaus]

Thank you for the help. As I will be the one having to input the code, please let me know if this should go into the Search.aspx / Search.aspx.cs files.

[nadeem]

This will go into the search.aspx.cs file's Page_Load method. You can do something like this:

Locate

Code: Select all

BindSearchResultsPanel();

and replace with

Code: Select all

// ADD NOINDEX META TAG TO PREVENT BROWSERS FROM INDEXING THE PAGE
HtmlMeta keyword = new HtmlMeta();
keyword.Name = "robots";
keyword.Content = "noindex";
Page.Header.Controls.Add(keyword);

BindSearchResultsPanel();

[Brewhaus]

Perfect. Thank you so much for your help!