How to disallow search pages from robots.txt

Question

I need to disallow http://example.com/startup?page=2 search pages from being indexed.

I want http://example.com/startup to be indexed but not http://example.com/startup?page=2 and page3 and so on.

Also, startup can be random, e.g., http://example.com/XXXXX?page

Answer 1

Something like this works, as confirmed by Google Webmaster Tools "test robots.txt" function:

User-Agent: *
Disallow: /startup?page=

Disallow The value of this field specifies a partial URL that is not to be visited. This can be a full path, or a partial path; any URL that starts with this value will not be retrieved.

However, if the first part of the URL will change, you must use wildcards:

User-Agent: *
Disallow: /startup?page=
Disallow: *page=
Disallow: *?page=

Answer 2

You can put this on the pages you do not want indexed:

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NONE">

This tells robots not to index the page.

On a search page, it may be more interesting to use:

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX,FOLLOW">

This instructs robots to not index the current page, but still follow the links on this page, allowing them to get to the pages found in the search.

Answer 3

1. Create a text file and name it: robots.txt
2. Add user agents and disallow sections (see sample below)
3. Place the file in the root of your site

Sample:

###############################
#My robots.txt file
#
User-agent: *
#
#list directories robots are not allowed to index 
#
Disallow: /testing/
Disallow: /staging/
Disallow: /admin/
Disallow: /assets/
Disallow: /images/
#
#
#list specific files robots are not allowed to index
#
Disallow: /startup?page=2
Disallow: /startup?page=3
Disallow: /startup?page=3
# 
#
#End of robots.txt file
#
###############################

Here's a link to Google's actual robots.txt file

You can get some good information on the Google webmaster's help topic on blocking or removing pages using a robots.txt file