# Exclude files ("header.php", "footer.php", etc) from showing up in SE results?

**URL:** <https://forum.kirupa.com/t/exclude-files-header-php-footer-php-etc-from-showing-up-in-se-results/288264>\
**Category:** Uncategorized\
**Created:** [May 13, 2009, 3:12pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/exclude-files-header-php-footer-php-etc-from-showing-up-in-se-results/288264 "2009-05-13T15:12:16Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![quicksmack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/fbc32d/32.png) [@quicksmack](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/quicksmack)\
**Post date:** [May 13, 2009, 3:12pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/exclude-files-header-php-footer-php-etc-from-showing-up-in-se-results/288264/1 "2009-05-13T15:12:16Z")

</div>

basically, i am making a website who’s pages are made up of php include statements:  
so, for example, i would have one page titled “home.php” with the following php code in it:

```php
<? include ("includes/header.php"); include ("includes/home_body.php"); include ("includes/footer.php"); ?>

```

i would also have another page titled “about.php” with the following php code in it:

```php
<? include ("includes/header.php"); include ("includes/about_body.php"); include ("includes/footer.php"); ?>

```

and so on and so forth…

what i would like to know is how to exclude all the “includes” files (“home\_body.php”, “header.php”, “footer.php”, “about\_body.php”, etc…) from being shown in search engine results…

i know i could easily put a robots meta-tag for example in the “header.php” file like:

```auto
<meta name="robots" content="noindex" />

```

but wont that make the “about.php” file also not indexed? because by including the “header.php” file inside “about.php”, i am technically writing down “\<meta name=“robots” content=“noindex” /\>” in the "about.php file as well?  
am i right or wrong about this?

what is the proper way of using the robots meta tag? or are there any other solutions?  
once again, i would just like to avoid my “includes” files from showing up in SE results… while leaving the other files (like “about.php”, “home.php”, etc.) show up in search results…