Want to exclude TEST folder from Google indexing

I don't know much about this, which is why I'm asking here. But I want to set up a TEST folder within my domain name's main folder, for testing new website stuff before making it live.

So for example: mydomainname folder is indexed in Google, as I want it to be, but I want mydomainname/TEST to NOT be indexed by Google. A quick and simple way of putting a robots.txt ONLY within mydomainname/TEST, to do that?

For example, would it just say noindex, and that would prevent that folder from getting indexed by google?

 

User-agent: *
Disallow: /test/

Code (markup):

 

Thanks quickad. Is that second line correct if I put the file inside the TEST folder only?

 

Yes. You're basically telling the bot to avoid indexing yoursite.com/test/

 

But I don't have a robots.txt in my main site, so I was putting it only in the test folder.

 

You need to create a robots.txt file in the main directory where your index.html (or index.php) file is. Placing that code in the robots.txt file in the TEST folder won't do any good.

 

Oh drat. I haven't had one in the main folder because I read that most robots just ignore them anyway. My aim with this is to keep Google from thinking that my test folder is a duplicate site, and downgrading my site.

So if I wanted to create one for my main site, what kinds of robots do I not want? Is Google considered a robot? I don't even know.

 

Bots, crawlers, spiders it's all pretty much the same. Bad bots will crawl your site whether you put specifications in the robots.txt file or not. You don't have to worry about them. Google, Bing will follow the rule above.

 

Thanks guys!