I have noticed through G sitemaps that google is indexing my css file as some of the sites text. Will blocking googlebot from my css file hinder its indexing of the site could it possibly hurt any existing rankings my site has.
Disallowing the indexing of CSS files will not have any effect on the SERP. The bots view a page just like any other general user, the css file is called (if it exists) in the header upon page load (regardless of its indexed or not).
I would disagree with this on one fact... Google looks for CSS spam, disallowing the CSS may cause potential trust factors. Also, it may cause Google to not read it an it may feel you have some invisible text.
Thanks for pointing that out I almost forgot that Google really cracked down on CSS spam with the bigdaddy update and didnt even think of it that way.....
That's why I said "as of right now".... Do you have any proof? Either way, Google will pick up on it eventually. I mean heck, why would you want to diswallow your css file? To hide things.
I think indexing CSS is temporary since it does not belong to the list of file types indexed by Google.
well if you disallowed your css file then what would be the point of spamming your css file cause it would not even get crawled or index anyways you would be killing your own spamming efforts.....
I think we are having a miscommunication here minnseoelite, there is no way we can tell Google to disallow a CSS file.. The only way we can do is to include the CSS file in the robots.txt to block out the bots. Please note that telling Google not to index a CSS file does not equal to telling Google to hide the file. CSS will still be in effect and shown to the client / bots and indexed as a page. The bots will see the page with CSS effects regardless of whether its (the CSS file) indexed or not. I hope i have explained it clear enough