Building a web on server, how to stop search engines to find it?

Question

I am building a website and heard that if the website gets listed on search engines, it might get bad reputation and its very difficult to lift it up on the rank of those search engines.

I would like to know, how could I make my website not to be listed on search engines until I finish it.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Most obvious: don't link it anywhere.

Second most obvious: put in authentication requirement (basic, digest)

Also: http://www.robotstxt.org/, specifically http://www.robotstxt.org/faq/prevent.html

As they say, note that robots.txt is only a suggestion. Google will heed it, but spambots will not.

Answer 2

Google for robots.txt. It's a standard supported by all major search engines that allows you to kindly request a web crawler to ignore parts or all of your website.

Answer 3

Do you need to make it available on the internet before it's done? Why not keep the development local?