htmlhyperlinkgatsbynoindex

Noindex File page on Gatsby?

I have a static site in Gatsby. I'm using an <a> tag to link to a pdf file to download, shortened version below:

import file from '../files/file.pdf';

<a
  className='hover:underline hover:text-black'
  href={file}
  download
>

This works fine, except that Google is now indexing the content of that file. I would like for it not to. The only things I've found suggest that you can add a noindex to the meta tags for a page you don't want indexed, which makes sense - but there is no page for the file, it's just the file itself. I could also conceivably add a nofollow to the link itself, but I'm not sure how to do that in Gatsby.

What's the best way to remove that "page" from search indexes? Thanks!

Solution

  • You can add a nofollow attribute like this:

    <a
  className='hover:underline hover:text-black'
  rel="nofollow"
  href={file}
  download
>

    That will tell the Google Bot not to follow that link.

    Another option would be to list the URL in your robots.txt.