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How can I hide my storymaps from Google search indexing?

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12-04-2021 03:18 AM
Lvivcenter
Occasional Contributor

I use Storymaps on a regular basis. Stories that I create are embedded into my website, which is the primary place I would like to show them. And this is the place I would like my audience to direct. However, Google search engine does indexing for both URLs of the same publication - the one on my website and the one on the arcgis.com server. Meaning, the audience of my website while searching for my project receives the arcgis.com link first instead of my project's website. This is not only adverse to my project - it is also very confusing for the audience as they end up not on the website they expect to. 
I am very happy with the tools that the ArcGIS license offers. But having no possibility to use "noindex" and "nofollow" tags devalues all the advantages it could offer (paradoxically enough - free license users have this feature by default).
In previous discussions, I could see a continuous demand from other community members about the same feature (which is available on almost any other platform of the same kind) and no legible answer from the ArcGIS platform why it can't be implemented.
So, I have a direct practical question in this regard. How can I hide my storymaps/experience apps from Google search indexing but still keep them publicly available?

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7 Replies
DanPatterson
MVP Esteemed Contributor

No solution, but there is an "Idea" about this issue, which you could support

Solved: Is there a way to prevent search engine indexing f... - Esri Community


... sort of retired...
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Lvivcenter
Occasional Contributor

Yes, I have already voted for this a while ago. Retired, indeed...

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DanPatterson
MVP Esteemed Contributor

my "signature" .... not the idea


... sort of retired...
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jcarlson
MVP Esteemed Contributor

Are you using ArcGIS Online or Portal?

If the latter, you may be able to selectively place a robots.txt file or alter the root storymaps page to include a noindex item in the <meta> tag.

If the former, you may simply be out of luck, as I don't believe you'd have the necessary access to make those sorts of changes in AGOL.

- Josh Carlson
Kendall County GIS
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Lvivcenter
Occasional Contributor

I am using ArcGIS online. And I don't really need access to root folders or source code in this case. Ideally, that could be one of the publishing options. 

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Lake_Country_GIS
Frequent Contributor

Can anyone confirm if Google does indeed index ArcGIS Online content? I have quite a bit of metadata about a trail map I created, but, If I query a specific text from the metadata in Google, the page does not come up in the search results.

 

Thanks in advance,

 

M

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OwenGeo
Esri Notable Contributor

Good news! Last week, ArcGIS StoryMaps gained the ability to opt-out of search engine registration. For more information, see What’s new in ArcGIS StoryMaps (August 2023) (esri.com).

Owen Evans
Lead Product Engineer | StoryMaps
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