fix: keep API JSON out of Google results - #160
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Google had started indexing /api/v1/*.json endpoints (18 URLs in Search Console). Those are machine payloads, not pages, and they dilute the crawl budget that should go to the model, provider and parameter pages. Serve /api/v1 with X-Robots-Tag: noindex (vercel.json for prod, an Express middleware for dev/test parity) and drop rel="nofollow" on every internal link to a .json endpoint. The endpoints stay public and crawlable on purpose: a robots.txt Disallow would hide the noindex and strand the already-discovered URLs in the index. Also adds /api, the HTML docs page, to the sitemap. It was canonical and indexable but missing from it.
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💭 Why
Search Console shows Google crawling 18
/api/v1/*.jsonURLs. Those are machine payloads, not pages. They add nothing in search results and eat crawl budget that should go to the model, provider and parameter pages.✨ What changed
/api/v1/*now returnsX-Robots-Tag: noindex(vercel.json for prod, Express middleware for dev/test parity)..jsonendpoints getrel="nofollow"(model page, footer, "How to use" panel)./api, the HTML docs page, added to the sitemap. It was indexable but missing.buildRobotsTxthelper, so the crawl policy is tested instead of inlined in the build script.👤 For users
Nothing changes. Every endpoint stays public, CORS-enabled and fetchable. Only search engines are asked to skip them.
📝 Notes
robots.txt deliberately does not
Disallow: /api/. Blocking the crawl would hide the noindex header and leave the 18 URLs stuck in the index as bare links. They need to be crawled once more to be dropped.Deindexing takes a few weeks. Worth re-checking Search Console after the next crawl.