In the 40 to 50 Technical SEO Audits I have done in the last 3 years, at least 10 of them have had the staging / UAT (User Acceptance Testing) version of their site indexed by Google. Preventing a staging website from getting indexed by Google is essential to ensure that the site’s unfinished or incomplete content does not appear in search results. Worse yet is having it show up as an exact replica of the live site, and then having duplicate content. Below are some steps you can take to prevent Google from indexing your staging website:
- Use a robots.txt file: A robots.txt file is a text file that tells search engine bots which pages or sections of your website to crawl or not to crawl. You can add the robots.txt file to the root directory of your staging website and add the following code to prevent Google from crawling your site:
User-agent: * Disallow: /
This code will instruct all search engine bots to avoid crawling any page or section of your website. - Password protect your website: Another way to prevent Google from indexing your staging website is by password-protecting it. You can do this by adding a login page or using a plugin that restricts access to the website. This will prevent any search engine bots from accessing the website, and your staging website will not be indexed.
- Use a “noindex” meta tag: You can also add a “noindex” meta tag to the header section of your website’s HTML code. This tag tells search engines not to index the page. Here’s an example of what the code should look like:
<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”>
By using any of these methods, you can ensure that the content on your staging website remains hidden from Google and other search engines – until you are ready to launch it on your live site.
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