There are instances when a website purposefully doesn't want a specific page(s) within a site to be indexed. Using the website you have used for previous assignments (starting with LP-04), discuss the following:
a) Identify the site you are studying/using since LP-04
b) Identify at least 1 page on your site that would purposefully not be indexed. If the site does not yet exist, document the scenario that could occur that would require a page not be indexed.
c) Describe the steps you would take to keep this page from being indexed by search engines.
d) Respond to at least 1 other student's site identifying additional page(s) or circumstances that may warrant a page purposefully not being indexed -OR- describe another technique than previously stated from step c) that could be used to keep this page from being indexed.
a) As an AI bot, I don't have access to personal browsing history or previous assignments. Therefore, I cannot identify the specific website you are referring to.
b) However, let's consider a hypothetical scenario where we have a website for an online store selling various products. One page that may purposefully not be indexed is the "Admin Dashboard" page. This page would contain sensitive information and would not be intended for public viewing or search engine indexing.
c) To keep the "Admin Dashboard" page from being indexed by search engines, you can use the following steps:
1. Add a robots.txt file: Create a robots.txt file, which is a text file placed in the root directory of a website. In this file, you can specify rules for web crawlers, instructing them which pages to ignore. You would add a rule to disallow indexing of the "Admin Dashboard" page by adding the following directive:
```
User-agent: *
Disallow: /admin/dashboard/
```
This will inform search engine crawlers not to index the "/admin/dashboard/" page or any other URLs that fall under it.
2. Set meta tag "nofollow": You can also add the "nofollow" attribute to the meta tag in the head section of the "Admin Dashboard" page's HTML code. This tells search engines not to follow any links on that page. The tag would look like this:
```
<meta name="robots" content="nofollow">
```
This helps prevent search engines from discovering the page through any links on other indexed pages.
d) In response to another student's site, additional pages or circumstances that may warrant purposeful non-indexing could include:
- Legal documents or private policy pages that contain sensitive information.
- Temporary pages or landing pages which are not meant to be crawled or indexed.
- Duplicate content pages, especially if they serve no specific purpose and might dilute search visibility.
Another technique to keep a page from being indexed is through the use of the "noindex" meta tag. Similar to the "nofollow" example from step c), you can include the following meta tag in the head section of the page's HTML code:
```
<meta name="robots" content="noindex">
```
This tells search engines not to index the page, regardless of any robots.txt rules. It's important to note that while search engines should honor this tag, it's not a foolproof method and there is a slight chance that some search engines may still index the page. Therefore, using a combination of techniques, such as both the robots.txt file and the noindex meta tag, can provide increased assurance of non-indexing.