tricky code

[loki]

can someone lend me a hand here?

due to an affiliate arrangement our site is duplicated, only difference s the header changes to the name of the affiliate.

i want to stop the spiderbots from indexing the affiliate version of the site but am not sure if this can be done via robots.txt

a 'good' url is
http://www.friendlyrentals.com/Start.aspx?CultureCode=fr-FR&RegionId=1&ControlConfig=0

a 'duplicate' url is
http://www.friendlyrentals.com/Start.aspx?CultureCode=fr-FR&RegionId=1&ControlConfig=1

(ie, the ControlConfig changes from 0 to 1)

can this be done?

thanks

[polarmate]

All bots do not recognize wildcards in the disallow string. Your most effective method would be to add a Robots meta tag set to nofollow when ControlConfig <> 0 using your asp code.

[loki]

not the answer i was expecting but will do nicely.

thankyou!

[loki]

polarmate,

wouldn't that be noindex ?

[g1smd]

You simply put some similar code to this on the page:

IF ControlConfig=1 THEN output '<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex\">'

You should also do this on a site that has pages that are "print friendly".

[JohnC]

Another option since you are using .Net. Capture the referers and when the surfer comes in from your affiliate, set the ControlConfig parameter in your Global ASA file. That way you will only have one set of URLs and can still display a different header for your affiliate.

[polarmate]

:rolleyes: yes it should! Sorry, loki!

John, many personal firewalls and anti-virus software have 'block referrer info' set to yes by default. What you have suggested will work but not 100% of the time.

[loki]

thanks all.

[g1smd]

The meta tag version will work the best for all browsers and bots. It doesn't rely on anything other than what the URL called actually is.