Are documents hosted in Marketo searchable via Google or other search engines?

[Anonymous]

Would a web user be able to find documents that we have hosted in our Marketo Design studio via websearch using google or any other search engine? 

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Fully agreed this is an issue.

Here is the corresponding idea:  

-Greg

[Frank_Breen2]

Totally agree, though you can submit a Support case and ask them to add a robots.txt file to block, lots of discussions around this: Is there a way to add a robots.txt file for Domain Alias? 

[Sarah_Greig2]

Our pdfs are being found by google. We don't host these on Marketo landing pages but on email autoresponders. I've contacted support but they have not suggested de-listing the files. Do Marketo still do this?

[Frank_Breen2]

If the files aren't in the Marketo Design Studio, then you have to setup a robots.txt file on the server that hosts the files. See this helpful page from Google - Learn about robots.txt files - Search Console Help​.

[Sarah_Greig2]

These files are all hosted in design studio.

[Steven_Vanderb3]

This is correct.  Support can delist your entire Images & Files section of Design Studio.  Just file a ticket, it's a quick and easy request for us.  It's an all or nothing though, we can't delist only certain filetypes or certain folders.

[SanfordWhiteman]

It's an all or nothing though, we can't delist only certain filetypes or certain folders.

Steven and Frank Breen I don't understand why people don't just use a redirect, as I noted in another thread.

301'ing your robots.txt is totally valid (ignore FUD to the contrary as that only pertains changing domains).  You have full control over the file, including path and file masks.

[Sarah_Greig2]

So can you do this to pdf files that re stored in design studio? Our pdfs are stored there and are not hosted on landing pages but are sent via email autoresponders.

[Frank_Breen2]

Use the attached robots.txt to block the assets folder, then do the redirect Sanford suggests.

[Sarah_Greig2]

Marketo have enabled the robots.txt on the images file. Problem is that our pdf link has been published also on searchable pages. Do you know if Marketo would re-direct an actual pdf link?>

[Frank_Breen2]

What the robots.txt is doing here is stopping the content of the PDF's to be searchable, without it, people could potentially find gated content through a normal web search. Or if you use use an advanced search in Google and type the following:

site:pages2.marketo.com filetype:pdf

You'll see all of Marketo's PDF's, change pages2.marketo.com for your domain so see what is being indexed.

[Frank_Breen2]

Use the attached robots.txt to block the assets folder, then do the redirect Sanford suggests.

[Cecile_Maindron]

thanks. I have voted.

[Anonymous]

Steven, we don't have any pages with links to our PDF files that are being indexed.  We use emails to send the links.  I think Marketo is going to have to solve this.

[Cecile_Maindron]

I agree. We have same issue. Our PDFs links are distributed through Thank You Emails and yet the PDF link (that are gated) are showing up in Google Search. This is an issue for us. The discussion is quite old. Has any solution been found since?

[Anonymous]

Ed you should look first at your landing pages and thank you pages.  If the PDFs are linked here and the pages are indexable then the PDFs will be indexed by Google.  You might try the no index no follow as mentioned above, use emails to send links to the PDFs, and/or use javascript to serve the PDFs

[Ed_Kuryluk]

I know it's 2 months later, but I'm having the same problem as Elliott. Has anyone figure out a solution? Our pdfs are stored as files in "Images and files". 

[Anonymous]

Ugh - some of our PDFs in the Images and Files folder are being found by Google and these are normally gated. Is there any way that Marketo can prevent PDF files it hosts from being indexed / followed? 

[Anonymous]

Emily, I've found in testing this that some PDFs show up in Google.  Once Google has it, I'd recommend hosting these somewhere else if you are concerned about this.

Suppose your company name is ABC and your marketo instance is pages.abc.com.  Use these search strings in Google:

site:pages.abc.com filetype:pdf
pdf site:pages.abc.com

If anything shows up, its likely a pdf hosted in your images folder.

[Anonymous]

That makes sense - thank you for the tip! Do you know if a PDF hosted in Marketo would also be searchable?