| your download page or thank you page is posted in a | | | | editor) |
| forum? Is your download page listed in Google? What | | | | Type this following to prevent all robots to crawl or |
| about your eBook? | | | | index your certain directory: |
| Your result of your hard work can be accessed by | | | | User-agent:* |
| everyone because your page's URL is too simple to | | | | Disallow:/directory/where directory is the directory that |
| guess or your page is simply indexed by search | | | | you don't want to be crawled or indexed by search |
| engines such as Google. You invested your money, | | | | engine robots. |
| time and energy to create your best product but your | | | | If we use the first example in the random directory, |
| product can be found by everyone easily without even | | | | type this following: |
| paying you. You could loose thousands of dollars. You | | | | User-agent:* |
| don't want this happen to you, do you? | | | | Disallow:/jw2r9/ |
| Fortunately its remedy is simple. You just need to: | | | | Save the file as robots.txt |
| Create a random directory inside your domain to | | | | Upload it to your domain root directory so that it looks |
| make it harder for people to guess the actual location | | | | like this: |
| of your precious page | | | | Confirm if everything is correct using robots.txt |
| And use robots.txt to prevent it from being indexed by | | | | validator |
| search engines. | | | | For more information on robots.txt, you can visit |
| Or simply use Download Guardian for your ultimate | | | | Are these two tricks enough to protect your product |
| protection. | | | | download page, thank you page and private page? |
| Random directory | | | | Perhaps, because nothing is perfect in this world. |
| Creating random directory is simple. Simply use your | | | | So I'll give you another trick to triple protect your |
| FTP program to login into your server then create a | | | | precious page :) |
| new directory there. For your double protection, create | | | | Meta tags |
| another sub directory inside that new directory. Then | | | | Another trick, which may be more convenient for page |
| put your product download page, thank you page or | | | | usage, adds a META tag to an HTML page to tell |
| private page inside this directory. | | | | search engine robots not to index the page. |
| For example: is your domain name.jw2r9 is your | | | | To prevent all robots from indexing a page on your |
| random directory.kam17 is your random sub directory | | | | site, place this following META tag into the HEAD |
| inside jw2r9 directory.thanks.html is your product | | | | section of your page: |
| download page, thank you page or private page. | | | | That should helps protect your precious pages. |
| Now, if you have a product to be downloaded, you do | | | | One more trick, exclusive to blog only! |
| the same things for its location. | | | | Disallow Pings |
| For example: is your domain name.z3mo8 is your | | | | All of those tricks above are useless if you still allow |
| random directory. | | | | pings for your blog page or blog post. |
| 9jk4f is your random sub directory inside z3mo8 | | | | Disallow pings for your precious page. |
| directory.product.pdf is your product to be downloaded. | | | | If you use Wordpress: |
| This trick makes it harder for people to guess where | | | | Expand your discussion tab |
| your precious page is but it still doesn't prevent search | | | | Uncheck "Allow Pings" |
| engines to index your page. In addition, once someone | | | | These tricks should help you protect your product |
| purchases your product, he can save it to his Favorite | | | | download page, thank you page and private page. |
| or Bookmarks with the possibility to share it with | | | | However, these tricks don't protect your precious |
| others. So it's wise to move around your precious | | | | page if your buyer adds it to his Internet Explorer's |
| pages regularly. | | | | Favorite, Firefox's Bookmarks or social bookmarks and |
| Robots.txt | | | | share the link with his friends. |
| Robots.txt is a simple text file that tells the search | | | | For your ultimate protection, you need Download |
| engine robots not to crawl certain directories and | | | | Guardian! |
| pages of your site. | | | | Download Guardian |
| When a robot crawls your site it looks for the | | | | Download Guardian |
| robots.txt file. If it doesn't find one it assumes | | | | Stops download link sharing, thank you page and |
| automatically that it may crawl and index the entire | | | | download page sharing with expiring download links. |
| site. Not having a robots.txt file can also create | | | | Allows you to set a time limit for the amount of time a |
| unnecessary 404 errors (page not found error) in your | | | | link is valid. |
| server logs, making it more difficult to track the real | | | | Limit the number of times someone can use that link. |
| 404 errors. | | | | Offers flexible security for your product, helping to fight |
| Creating robots.txt file is easy. | | | | against piracy. |
| Open your notepad or other text editor (not HTML | | | | And many more. |