Google Expands Robots Exclusion Protocol, Unavailable After Tag Now Live

Jul 30, 2007 - 9:22 am 0 by

As we've discussed before, Google has been planning an unavailable_after tag that would enable webmasters to alert Google to when content should no longer be crawled by the Googlebot. A Google Blog post by Dan Crow announces that this feature is now live. Additionally, Google is now accepting a META tag to be associated with any file. This allows webmasters to control access to PDFs, graphics, video, and audio files.

WebmasterWorld members are glad that Google is embracing additions to the robots.txt protocol, but they're concerned that other search engines won't follow suit. This is great for Google, but webmasters still need to be in control over the META elements as before for Yahoo, Ask, and MSN.

Barry over at Search Engine Land also announces the news, and beu at Search Engine Watch Forums alerts the community of this addendum as well.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Search Engine Watch Forums.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
- YouTube
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: July 11, 2025

Jul 11, 2025 - 10:00 am
Search Video Recaps

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Helpful Content Recoveries With Core Update, AI Mode Expands, Hidden Ad Terms & Fewer Ad Clicks

Jul 11, 2025 - 8:01 am
Google Maps

Google Local & Business Profiles Drops June 25th - Reporting Glitch?

Jul 11, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google

Google Tests Zoom Effect In On Images Within Search Results

Jul 11, 2025 - 7:41 am
Bing Search

Bing Search Image Box Tests Explore Image & Visual Search Buttons

Jul 11, 2025 - 7:31 am
Bing Search

Microsoft Bing Tests Delivery Truck Icon In Search Ads

Jul 11, 2025 - 7:21 am
Previous Story: Wikipedia Founder Proposes Open Source Search Engine