Excluding Jira DC from Google's indexing

[Jakob KN]

Hi folks!

I want to exclude our Jira instance from Google's indexing, so it doesn't turn up in the results when searching for, for example "company-name Jira".

I've seen mentioned that it could be possible to add the meta tag <noindex>, but that it might not work properly. And that it might be required to either get in touch with Google to have them exclude the site from their indexing, or manage the indexing through the Google Webmaster tools.

The above is mentioned in these two articles:

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-Software-questions/Stop-google-from-indexing-my-JIRA/qaq-p/742410 

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-questions/How-do-I-stop-Google-from-indexing-JIRA-work-tickets/qaq-p/391656

I do not have access to the Google webmaster tools, and would therefore like to see if it's possible to resolve this directly in Jira.

Have anyone managed to successfully exclude a Jira DC instance from indexing?
And if so, how?

[Charlie Misonne]

Hi @Jakob KN 

I usually add a response header in my reverse proxy configuration:

x-robots-tag: noindex,nofollow

It's certainly easier than adding a <noindex> html tag.

There is no setting in Jira that will prevent search engines from indexing your Jira.

Note: once you add that reponse header it can take several days before your site is removed from search engines.

I believe you can speed up this process with the Google web master tools indeed. But it will only affect Google and not any other search engines. For me it's too long ago I used the webmaster tools. I assume you must be the owner of the domain to do anything with it.