How do I control whether my journal and entries appear in search engines?

Why do my entries end up in search engines? How do I avoid it?

There is no way to guarantee that external search engines will not index your journal. However, there are a few methods you can use to prevent your entries from being listed by search engines:

• Limit access to your entries through security (privacy) settings — entries which, when they were posted for the first time, were set to "Just Me (Private)", "Friends" or specific Groups of friends, are not being indexed;


• Set default entry security for your journal to minimum;


• Hide contact information on your profile page — by changing your preferences on the Edit Profile page;


• Minimize your journal's inclusion in search engine results — enable "Minimize my journal's inclusion in search engine results" setting on Privacy tab of your account settings. This will add a “robots.txt” file for your journal, and special tags will be added for your journal and personal information pages that will notify search engines to refrain from indexing your pages. However, not all search robots may comply with these instructions, so this method is not always effective.
  
  Please note that this setting allows you to minimize your entries appearance in external search engines, however, they may still appear in LiveJournal internal search. To prevent your entries from being included in the LiveJournal search, set the secutiry level for them to "Just Me (Private)" or "Friends" or Groups.

Many search engines index public LiveJournal entries within seconds or minutes of those entries being posted. Entries that were posted publicly, and then changed to friends-only or private security levels, may have already been indexed in the short time they were publicly available. If your entries have been indexed by a search engine, there is nothing LiveJournal can do to remove them from index. You will need to contact the search engine directly and request that your entries are removed.

My entries are not appearing in search results, why?

Your entries won't appear in search results if you've enabled the "Minimize my journal's inclusion in search engine results" setting on Privacy tab of your account settings. If this setting is not enabled, the indexing of your journal is determined by the rules of a search engine itself; for example, it may depend on the number of links to your entries or on the matching of the search query with the information found.

Most often, you only need to wait a little for your journal to appear in search results. If for some reason you don't want to wait, you can manually add your journal to the search engine database. Please contact the support department of the search engine for more information about the engine and its features.

Sitemap and links indexation

A sitemap.xml file is created for accounts with Professional package in case indexation of the journal is not restricted. Only indexed entries are being mapped.
To prevent spam and search results manipulation, "rel=nofollow" attribute is automatically added to all links in entries and comments posted by users of accounts without additional packages. In case with entries or comments in communities, it is the author's account type that matters, not community's.

Robots.txt

You can ensure that LiveJournal doesn't have any restrictions for your journal to be indexed by checking your robots exclusion standard file at https://exampleusername.livejournal.com/robots.txt.

Lines beginning with Disallow directive will exclude navigation pages from search, including the following:

• /data/foaf/ — FOAF file (https://exampleusername.livejournal.com/data/foaf)


• /tag/ — tags pages (https://exampleusername.livejournal.com/tag)


• /friendstimes — friendstimes feed


• /calendar ,/19,/20,… — calendar pages (https://exampleusername.livejournal.com/calendar)

As a precaution measure of spam-fighting program, robots.txt file is disallowing indexing of low-weighted journals (/ in Disallow directive). This prohibition is lifted automatically as soon as some other users become interested in your journal, or when your account is upgraded with Professional package of service.