Un-Indexing a Page without robots.txt or access to HEAD

[DRSearchEngOpt]

I am in a situation where a page was pushed live  (Went live for an hour and then taken down) before it was supposed to go live. Now normally I would utilize the robots.txt or  but I do not have access to either and putting a request in will not suffice as it is against protocol with the CMS.  So basically I am left to just utilizing the and I cannot seem to find a nice way to play with the SE to get this un-indexed.  I know for this instance I could go to GWT and do it but for clients that do not have GWT and for all the other SE's how could I do this?

Here is the big question here: What if I have a promotional page that I don't want indexed and am met with these same limitations?  Is there anything to do here?

[Desiree-CP]

I know this may sound obvious but I thought I would ask anyways: are you sure your page was indexed?

To check if this is the case go to Google or Bingahoo and type in **site:websiteURL.  **If your page in question does NOT show up then you don't have a problem.

However, if it does then I would urge you to quickly register your client's website with GWT and request a URL removal.  Also, if you want the page to get de-indexed "faster" I would recommend taking down the page altogether and implementing a 301 Permanent Redirect to a relevant page.  If you don't have a relevant page then server up a header response of 404 Not Found.

Of course, if that is too technical and you don't have development resources then you can just delete all the content on the page (or insert a "coming soon" image) and no one would be the wiser.  =]

I hope that helps!

[evolvingSEO]

Great answer - "bingahoo" - love that.

[DRSearchEngOpt]

Yeah the page was definitely indexed and that is how I found it.  The issue is pretty much over at this point as this was supposed to be a surprise announcement later this week but people found it up, posted it to forums and well...so much for that.  It was a client side error so I am not worried.

Now what I want to figure out is how to make sure that, if I am running a promotional page for specific traffic during a promo period and do not want the page indexed and am limited to only alter within the , it doesn't get indexed...Is this possible?

[Desiree-CP]

No, unfortunately there is no way to prevent search engine indexation within the tags of your web page.  As you mentioned earlier in your question, you can either utilize the meta robots exclusion tag or the robots.txt file.

If you are REALLY intent on blocking indexation of your promotional page and can only use the section, perhaps you can consider using an <iframe>?  For example, create a totally new page with your promotional copy and blocked by robots.txt while ensuring you have NO links pointing to it.  Then on your promotional page use the <iFrame> tag to extract the content from the robots.txt blocked copy.</p> <p>Honestly, I'm not sure if it'll prevent indexation since I've never tried it before but just an idea.</p> <p>Good luck and tell us how it goes if you do! =]</p></iframe>