My Tech-Notes

Block Google (and other search engines) from crawling your Koha OPAC safely and properly

Method 1: Use robots.txt

Koha’s OPAC usually runs on Apache or another web server. You can add a robots.txt file to the OPAC’s root directory.

Step 1: Create the robots.txt file

Example content to block all crawlers:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

This means: all user agents (crawlers) are disallowed from crawling anything.

Block Google only:

User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /

Step 2: Save it

in your Koha OPAC root directory — typically /usr/share/koha/opac/htdocs/ or wherever your Koha OPAC is served from.

Step 3: Make sure it’s accessible at:

https://your-opac-domain/robots.txt

Method 2: Add X-Robots-Tag Header

If you want a stronger block, add this HTTP header to OPAC pages:

Header set X-Robots-Tag "noindex, nofollow"

How to do this in Apache:

Add this to your OPAC’s virtual host config (/etc/apache2/sites-available/koha.conf or equivalent):

<Directory /usr/share/koha/opac/htdocs>
    Header set X-Robots-Tag "noindex, nofollow"
</Directory>

Then reload Apache:

sudo systemctl reload apache2

Method 3: Add <meta> tag in OPAC templates

You can also add:

<meta  name="robots"  content="noindex, nofollow">

in the OPAC page <head> section (opac-main.tt or similar template).

But the robots.txt + X-Robots-Tag header is usually enough.

Remember