Home The Google-Approved Way To Take Down Your Website In Protest

The Google-Approved Way To Take Down Your Website In Protest

There’s been a flurry of good news in the last few days for opponents of the SOPA/PIPA anti-piracy legislation worming its way through the U.S. Congress. The White House has come out opposing key flaws in the legislation, so both versions are effectively stuck for now. Not taking any chances, some of the world’s biggest websites, including Wikipedia and Reddit, are going dark on Wednesday, January 18 to protest the ill-conceived anti-piracy legislation.

On American Censorship Day in November, Tumblr censored its users’ dashboards. Now other Web behemoths will follow suit, taking their sites offline entirely. For other sites interested in joining the protest, there are technical considerations affecting search engine placement that webmasters should consider. Google’s Pierre Far has shared some important tips.

Far’s recommendations apply for any intentional, temporary downtime, whether for protest or maintenance. The essential step is to use a 503 HTTP status code, which indicates “service unavailable,” for all participating URLs.

That tells Google that the temporary conditions of the pages are not their “real” content, so the search engine won’t index them. That will also prevent duplicate content issues, even if the same message – whether it’s a word of protest or a message about maintenance – is displayed on all pages.

“Googlebot’s crawling rate will drop when it sees a spike in 503 headers,” Far says. This is normal, but he says the rate will recover soon for a temporary blackout. For webmasters only blacking out a portion of their sites, Far says they should not change the status code or explicitly disallow crawling in the robots.txt file, which gives Googlebot site-specific instructions. Webmaster Tools will report errors, but this is normal.

Far’s bottom-line advice is, “Keep it simple and don’t change too many things.” You can read his full instructions over on Google+.

About ReadWrite’s Editorial Process

The ReadWrite Editorial policy involves closely monitoring the tech industry for major developments, new product launches, AI breakthroughs, video game releases and other newsworthy events. Editors assign relevant stories to staff writers or freelance contributors with expertise in each particular topic area. Before publication, articles go through a rigorous round of editing for accuracy, clarity, and to ensure adherence to ReadWrite's style guidelines.

Get the biggest tech headlines of the day delivered to your inbox

    By signing up, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy. Unsubscribe anytime.

    Tech News

    Explore the latest in tech with our Tech News. We cut through the noise for concise, relevant updates, keeping you informed about the rapidly evolving tech landscape with curated content that separates signal from noise.

    In-Depth Tech Stories

    Explore tech impact in In-Depth Stories. Narrative data journalism offers comprehensive analyses, revealing stories behind data. Understand industry trends for a deeper perspective on tech's intricate relationships with society.

    Expert Reviews

    Empower decisions with Expert Reviews, merging industry expertise and insightful analysis. Delve into tech intricacies, get the best deals, and stay ahead with our trustworthy guide to navigating the ever-changing tech market.