Google Takes the Robots Meta Tag Further

July 18th, 2007

Following on from our previous article The Robots Meta Tag Explained which highlighted how the meta robots tag has evolved from a simple, almost boolean, command to a far more complex and flexible meta tool. It is interesting to see Google pushing this tool yet further with the addition of an UNAVAILABLE_AFTER meta tag.

The ‘unavailable_after’ meta tag is primarily designed for those website owners who have time sensitive web pages such as promotional offers. And in using this tag a webmaster can tell Google that a page should expire from the search results at a specific date and time.

As an example, if E-Gain was to run a Christmas SEO UK promotion we could add the following meta tag to our seo uk page.

<meta name=”GOOGLEBOT” content=”unavailable_after: 25-Dec-2007 13:00:00 GMT” />

This would instruct Google to stop indexing the Christmas promotion page at 1pm on Christmas day although, according to Dan Crow of Google, this would take around 24hrs to take effect.

Entry Filed under: SEO Industry