Prevent Google from crawling Ajax

[Shawn_Huber]

With Google figuring out how to make Ajax and JS more searchable/indexable, I am curious on thoughts or techniques to prevent this.

Here's my Situation, we have a page that we do not ever want to be indexed/crawled or other. Currently we have the nofollow/noindex command, but due to technical changes for our site the method in which this information is being implemented if it is ever displayed it will not have the ability to block the content from search. It is also the decision of the business to not list the file in robots.txt due to the sensitivity of the content. Basically, this content doesn't exist unless something super important happens, and even if something super important happens, we do not want Google to know of its existence.

Since the Dev team is planning on using Ajax/JS to pull in this content if the business turns it on, the concern is that it will be on the homepage and Google could index it. So the questions that I was asked; if Google can/does index, how long would that piece of content potentially appear in the SERPs? Can we block Google from caring about and indexing this section of content on the homepage?

Sorry for the vagueness of this question, it's very sensitive in nature and I am trying to avoid too many specifics. I am able to discuss this in a more private way if necessary.

Thanks!

[N1ghteyes]

You may find that you have to wrap the code that gets called when Ajax fires in something to catch the user agent. I.e. if your making an Ajax request to a php script in order to return data, you could wrap that php code in something like this (please excuse the Sudo code):

if(in_array($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], $knownagents){

//known webspider, or blocked agent, return nothing.

return "";

} else {

//not a known spider so continue.

}

?>

Thats very generalised but you get the idea. I put a short list together in JSON format a while back, you can find it here if its of any use: https://www.source-control.co.uk/knownspiders/spiders.php

PM me if you need any more specific help than that with development, hopefully someone else will have a slightly easier way of dealing with this though heh

[Shawn_Huber]

Toby, thanks for the suggestion! I believe that this will help accomplish what we need. My Dev gave the "oh S" I should've thought of that response.