Question
How do I exclude a help center page from being indexed by Google?
Answer
There are multiple ways that you can prevent a help center content from appearing in external search engine results such as Google.
- Add a no-index tag to the help center theme. This will prevent all pages from being indexed and appearing in search results, rather than only one page.
- Restrict the article to a specific subset of users through user segments in Guide, such as signed-in users
8 comments
Lior Talmor
This is very very very outdated! It's not possible anymore to exclude links from Web Master Tools / Google Search Console.
I would like to ask the same question that's in the title once again:
Is there any way to exclude a Help Center page from being indexed by Google?
I tried to use Helpers inside the document_head.hbs file but none of the helpers / conditionals actually let me look at the current page url in order to change the robots meta tag dependent on the current url, so there's no option to add a meta robots tag to the header on specific pages. The page I'm trying to block from is the search results page. Of course it's not possible to change robots.txt as well...
To clarify: The page HAS TO BE SEEN BY USERS (as it is in fact the search results page) but not by google (as.. well... It's the search results page!). What can be done?
Thanks :)
0
Gab
You can restrict the articles to signed-in users. Any articles that require a login are not indexed by Google. For more information on how to restrict a section, see this article: Setting view permissions on articles with user segments.
0
Lior Talmor
I'm afraid this is no good, I need the page to be accessible for our end-users (who do not have to be signed in). It's amazing to me that such an basic and essential functionality (hiding the search results page from google) is lacking from Guide admins. We cannot control the robots.txt, we cannot set meta tags or canonical tags inside the header for specific pages or articles (I've explored handlebars through and through but to no avail). We're just left with no control over SEO and no ability to manage our HC articles or pages on an individual basis. That's a real shame that such a basic feature just does not exist.
6
Nick Weirens
This is very concerning this is not a function of zendesk. This should be the top of the list to include basic functions such as excluding pages from being indexed
4
Joanne Kow
Yes. my help centre only for internal user which we do not want to get search result from google, bing, etc. Need to solution from Zendesk.
0
Tom Niv-Burrell
Alexander Popa - This article and this one are extremely outdated. As countless users have already mentioned in comments - this fix no longer works - this is a basic functionality that Zendesk needs to have ASAP.
1
James Warner-Smith
Are there any plans to address this feature in the near future? As many others have mentioned, this is a vital function for articles that we need an end customer to see (no sign in) but do not want to appear widely and very publicly in Google search results. Is it being addressed early this year?
0
Lior Talmor
Not counting on it, unfortunately…
0