How to Unindex Knowledge Base site from Search Engines

CMarritt · ‎Jul 5, 2021

Hi there,

We're having trouble unindexing our Knowledge Base from the search engines, I think this is down to the lack of HTML editing for the Knowledge Base as it should be just adding the 'no robots' tag...

The reason for this is because our knowledge base is affecting our website's SEO!

Thanks in advance

karstenkoehler · ‎Aug 4, 2021

Hi @CMarritt,

There's an update on this from a HubSpot Product manager @a_schumacher:

My team is currently building a setting in the knowledge base settings page that allows users to add or remove a no-index tag from their knowledge base search results. This setting will be slowly rolled out over the next few weeks, and there will be in-app notifications about it as well.

When we roll out this setting, we are going to have it turned on by default for all portals. This means that every portal will have a "no-index" tag applied to its KB search results page when the change goes live. Users who do not want a no-index tag on their search results page will have to manually go into the KB settings and toggle it off.

Let me know if that answers your initial question. If it does, you can help others find this information more easily by accepting my post as a solution. I'd appreciate it.

Best regards!

Karsten Köhler
HubSpot Freelancer | RevOps & CRM Consultant | Community Hall of Famer

Beratungstermin mit Karsten vereinbaren

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donrua · ‎Nov 29, 2021

I was surprised at the default status to no-index the KB articles.
When I do a search for Hubspot support questions, I find tons of links to KB articles. If it's good for Hubspot, why not for clients? Drift also makes their kb articles indexable.
When I do a google search on KB articles and SEO, most of the voices I hear are strongly in favor of opening the KB articles to the search index.

CMarritt · ‎Nov 29, 2021

Hmm thats actually a really good point! I'll mention it to my marketing manager

karstenkoehler · ‎Aug 4, 2021

Hi @CMarritt,

There's an update on this from a HubSpot Product manager @a_schumacher:

My team is currently building a setting in the knowledge base settings page that allows users to add or remove a no-index tag from their knowledge base search results. This setting will be slowly rolled out over the next few weeks, and there will be in-app notifications about it as well.

When we roll out this setting, we are going to have it turned on by default for all portals. This means that every portal will have a "no-index" tag applied to its KB search results page when the change goes live. Users who do not want a no-index tag on their search results page will have to manually go into the KB settings and toggle it off.

Let me know if that answers your initial question. If it does, you can help others find this information more easily by accepting my post as a solution. I'd appreciate it.

Best regards!

Karsten Köhler
HubSpot Freelancer | RevOps & CRM Consultant | Community Hall of Famer

Beratungstermin mit Karsten vereinbaren

Did my post help answer your query? Help the community by marking it as a solution.

Dream · ‎Oct 25, 2021

Hi there,

I'm having a bit of trouble understanding what the advantages/disadvantages are of allowing/blocking the index of knowledge base articles. When should/shouldn't knowledge base articles be indexed?

Many thanks,

Dream

CMarritt · ‎Nov 18, 2021

It depends on how you would like your KB to be viewed, for us, as a business we have our main website, which is to attract potential clients to our services, then we have our Knowledge Base website which is for existing clients to assist with any issues with tech and FAQs.

We don't want our KB articles appearing when potential clients search our brand as this battles with SEO against our main website.

webdew · ‎Jul 15, 2021

Hi @CMarritt ,

I would recommend you to try using the robots.txt tool, you can view this article for more detailed steps

As you want to "unindex" the knowledge base from search engines right, using a robots.txt file will block a page URL from being indexed for search. So for example if my knowledge base url is called help.kb.com, and I want it to be blocked from being indexed by search engines, I can add a robots.txt file in hubspot to ensure that search engines do not index my page.

Hope this helps!

If we were able to answer your query, kindly help the community by marking it as a solution.

Thanks and Regards.

karstenkoehler · ‎Jul 5, 2021

Hi @CMarritt,

This is not possible at this stage, unfortunately, but development for knowledge base custom <head> HTML is underway as of May 2021, see here: Knowledge Base: Add extra fields for SEO meta-data

I'd recommend upvoting the idea, this will alert you when there is progress.

Best regards!

Karsten Köhler
HubSpot Freelancer | RevOps & CRM Consultant | Community Hall of Famer

Beratungstermin mit Karsten vereinbaren

Did my post help answer your query? Help the community by marking it as a solution.

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