preventing Google from caching pages

[Megg81]

yea, the site build isnt for me so it has to be uploaded to the server, it will go in a seperate folder for testing which already has a robots.txt with it. What Im concerned about is that I currently have an under construction message displayed for the url - I dont want the site to go live and google still show that as a cached page and take months to fall out of the cache

on the other hand I dont want a robots.txt file to harm the sites ranking potential once it's removed after the site goes live

[steve.ledger]

Remove the robots.txt when you're ready to go live.

Alternatively, password protect the folder to allow only yourself and your client to view it. Google won't be able to get to it then.

[pauland]

Steve's password suggestion is good.

I usually show client's their projects by adding a directory to my own domain and uploading their stuff there.

If there is an existing site in place, it takes only one slip to overwrite the live one accidentally.