Google indexing directory folder listing page

[invision]

Google somehow managed to find several of our images index folders and decided to include them into their index. Example: websitesite.com/category/images/ is what you'll see when doing a site:website.com search.

So, I have two-part question:

1) Does this hurt our site's ability to rank in any way?
Because all Google sees is just a directory listing page with a bunch of links to images in the folder.

2) If there could be any negative effect, what is the best way to get these folders out of Google's index?
I could block via robots.txt, but I'm afraid it will also block all the images in that folder from being indexed in Google image search. I could also turn off directory listing in cpanel / htaccess, but then that gives is a 403 forbidden. Will this hurt the site in anyway and would it prevent Google from indexing the images in the directory?

Thanks,
Tony

[john4math]

If you just want the directory page removed from SERPs, but not the images, you can put a meta noindex tag in the of the page (see here).  It'll look like .  Provided you link to the images from other pages, you should be in business.

I don't think it would hurt your rankings at all.  I would exclude it as you don't want people wandering in to your site on a directory page.