Best way to permanently remove URLs from the Google index?

[nicole.healthline]

We have several subdomains we use for testing applications. Even if we block with robots.txt, these subdomains still appear to get indexed (though they show as blocked by robots.txt.

I've claimed these subdomains and requested permanent removal, but it appears that after a certain time period (6 months)? Google will re-index (and mark them as blocked by robots.txt).

What is the best way to permanently remove these from the index? We can't use login to block because our clients want to be able to view these applications without needing to login.

What is the next best solution?

[Chris.Menke]

Wouldn't a noindex meta tag on each page take care of it?

[ThompsonPaul]

Yup - Chris has the solution. The robots.txt disallow directive simply instructs the crawler not to crawl, it doesn't have any instructions regarding removing URLs from the index. I'm betting there are other pages linking in to the subdomains that the bots are following to find and index as the URL Removal requests are expiring.

Do note though that when you add the no-index meta-robots tag, you're going to need to remove the robots.txt disallow directive. Otherwise the crawlers won't make any attempt to crawl all the pages and so won't even discover most of the no-index requests.

Paul

[Edited to add - there's no reason you can't implement the no-index meta-tags and then also again request removal via the Webmaster Tools removal tool. Kind of a "belt & suspenders approach. The removal request will get it out quicker, and the meta-no-index will do the job of keeping it out. Remember to do this in Bing Webmaster Tools as well.]

[MoosaHemani]

I agree with Paul, The Google is re indexing the pages because you have few linking pointing back to these sub domains. The best idea us to restrict Google crawler by using no-index , no-follow tag and remove the instruction available in the robots.txt...

This way Google will neither crawl nor follow the activity on the page and it will get permanently remove from Google Index.