Getting Google to ignore content

How do you tell Google to ignore specific pieces of your page when they are considering a page. Also, often Google takes the first part of your content and uses it as the description (specifically with Wordpress).

This is fine, and actually preferable, BUT...

I have a news ticker at the top of my page. So every page is now getting indexed with the same description (this crazy little snippet having nothing to do with the page really).

I know I read there is a way to "ignore" certain content. How is this done for Google and pother search engines? I have searched the web and can't find anything that will help.

 

You can set an instruction in your robots txt file to tell bots not to index pages, but not parts of pages.
Your best bet for this is to put that content in a format that bots find difficult to read, such as javascript or flash.

(please, don't tell me that google can now read javascript like some eeejit does every time I mention it - they can but not very well)

 

i thought there was a way to say not include this section which is normally used for defining ad content

 

Is there really a way to be ignored by Google.

 

Hey there. well you could always try to place this code on the header of your page.

Though this code is only valid for Google and Yahoo search engine crawlers.

Here's an article for more details on how to tell Google how to treat your content.

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/tell-google-how-to-treat-your-content-disallow-nofollow-noindex/6736/

 

if it is content then make image of it and dont put any "alt" into it

 

There must be something wrong with the code on the header of that page. Try checking with it.

 

There is nothing wrong anywhere and thanks everyone for the tidbits but maybe I didnt clearly explain enough.

First, you know wordpress doesnt include keywords or description in the header anymore. SO they issue is that I have this ticker at the top and the code is expertly written (bear with me here) so that it is absolutely readable by the search engines (meaning it displays as clean code and not some javascript that Google naturally ignores.

So this output shows up as the description, because for Google (and others) if you don't have a description tag identified it displays the first 150 + or - characters of your content. See the issue here since the ticker is at the top of my page, every page?

I have fixed this (not the way I wanted but) by adding in a plugin that allows me to manually (well with some automation for some pages) add description and keywords for posts and pages. Just means work, and probably worth it anyway.

However, and back to my real question, I know there is a way (and if I ever find it I will post back here) to tag content to tell Google not to consider it when evaluating content. This is normally meant for ad content in the middle of a page that may or may not directly relate to your content on that page.

What I was wondering was if it I did that around the ticker if it would still use that as the description or would it ignore it and use the first real paragraph of my page as the description. It may not even work for that, but I wanted to try and couldn't find it. I know I have used it before which is why I am frustrated.

Thansk again all for your comments!

 

use metatags to have spiders ignore your content

 

OK, no more responses on how to block an entire page, not what the post was about.