Password protected file is showing in search results

Publishing help SEO
1

Hi everyone!

I’ve had my site password protected for around a year now but for some reason a document I’ve attached as a link on the info page (pdf of my resume), is showing as a top result in search results under my name and not password protected.

So far I’ve updated the settings for the following:

  • disabled subdomain indexing for the entire site
  • excluded the info page with the pdf from site search results

Does anyone know how to hide the resume from search results?

Thanks so much!
Sam

Here is my site Read-Only: Webflow - Portfolio

[pw: schwan]

2

I’m guessing that;

  • You’re talking about Google SERPS, not Webflow Site Search
  • Your site wasn’t always password-protected

If your site was ever not password protected, Google would have crawled it, seen the PDF, and and indexed it. That file is still there, and still accessible- files aren’t directly part of the site so they’re not governed by site security.

You could upload a new CV on to your already password-protected site, and delete the old one. It would probably be safe, because even though the PDF itself is not secure, Google would not “see” it, and therefore would not index the new file.

Another option is to ditch the PDF, and build your CV as an actual Webflow page, which will be subject to password protection.

Beyond that you’d need to get creative, e.g. a second password for the PDF itself, or some sort of secure serving environment that gates it.

There might be some tools that allow PDF to Canvas rendering which could allow you to display the PDF in your page, but never expose the link to the original unsecured file. That gets a bit more technical and requires custom coding, but it’s an interesting approach.

4

Thanks so much for the detailed reply! I deleted the pdf and replaced with another but the original pdf is still showing up at the top of the search results. Do you know if it will be removed once the site is eventually crawled again? I made a complaint to google to take it down for privacy reasons but it was rejected.

5
  • Make sure the delete the actual file from assets, not just the links to it. That should at least make it inaccessible if someone clicked the link.
  • Eventually Google should notice, and update the index.
  • You’d likely need to contact WF support for a Google SERP removal request since files are stored under a Webflow domain.
6

@Sam_Schwan fire up your Google Search Console and request a Removal. I don’t believe that removing the PDF from assets will do the job since Webflow is caching everything on it’s CDN. But I might be wrong.
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