Most effective way to block google from indexing certain forums.

[Netbuddy]

Just wondering if this is achievable at all. I have a friend that runs a VB board, several years after it launched, he still finds it difficult to block google from indexing certain forums on his site.

Im not looking for a fullproof method. I dont think thats possible, but simply the most effective methods people have come up with so far.

Any help is really appreciated. If I can say I've made every effort to make a forum private, and it gets indexed anyway, at least ive covered my own backside.

I only want some forums private, on a selective basis, not the entire site.

Any help is really appreciated.

[laie_techie]

Admin_CP_Config_Spiders

[Tomm M]

The best probable way is to use a robots.txt to disallow access.

http://www.robotstxt.org/faq/prevent.html

Like it says, this will only block the well-behaved spiders that check the robots.txt file. I guess you can hard code it so that access is denied for specific spider user agents.