Ecommerce Web Design Blog

A support ticket recently came into the team from a customer wanting to know how they could block Google. With no other information, the tech support staff member thought this was an unusual request as it would be an exceptionally bold and baffling move to block the world's biggest search engine from visiting your site. When looking into the request, it turned out that the customer wanted to prevent Google from indexing their site before they had finished loading all of their products and getting things set up the way they want.

ozCart from Osc Works has a built-in maitenance mode to do this for you, but what if your website doesn't? How do you stop the search engines from finding and indexing every last crevice of your new website before you are ready to receive them?

Fortunately, the answer is simple. You can use the 'robots' tag in your HTML to prevent a search engine from indexing a page and searching for any other links in that page (and following them).

To add a robots tag into your site, go into the HTML and look for a section that starts . Somewhere between this and the end of the header section (where the HTML tag appears, insert the following line:

You need to insert this into every page that you don't want indexed just in case Google finds a page deep in your site and starts indexing from there.

When you are ready to launch, you remove this line from the code in your site and submit your site to the search engines. You're then live and can start building traffic and links.

Wherever you do business, you can never escape the law.  If you're an Australian or New Zealand business selling online where can you go to find out what your legal rights and obligations are?

Naturally there is your business solicitor, but if you are looking to do some reading yourself, here are some useful resources you can consider:

•  The ACCC website. The ACCC administer Australia's main fair trading law, The Trade Practices Act 1974, which applies no matter whether you are an online or offline business. Their website contains useful PDF downloads of fact-sheets and does have content on online store owners as well.
  
• The NZ equivalent of the ACCC is the Commerce Commission.
• WebLaw online. WebLaw is a website containing a range of legal resources for offline and online businesses. It has been developed by the legal department at Monash University. They have a whole section of their site devoted to Australian ecommerce law at the federal and state level too. Includes information on court rulings as well as information on the laws themselves.
  
• ozNetLaw website. ozNetLaw is a site designed specifically to help businesses understand their legal obligations when trading online. It has been sponsored by the Australian Attorney General's office and two leading private law firms.  It has a huge range of fact sheets covering legal issues encountered with respect to email privacy, advertising, marketing and more.
• Other resources. NZ customers will be subject to different ecommerce laws so should consider resources such as WashLaw NZ Legal Rsources Site. Unfortunately, NZs Ministry of Economic Development decided to discontinue their site about ecommerce news so the information on their site will grow out of date with time.