Robots.txt File Redirects to Home Page
-
I've been doing some site analysis for a new SEO client and it has been brought to my attention that their robots.txt file redirects to their homepage. I was wondering:
Is there a benfit to setup your robots.txt file to do this?
Will this effect how their site will get indexed?
Thanks for your response!
- Kyle
Site URL:
-
Yep, if you add a robots.txt it won't redirect. But I would look to remove the 404 redirect as well. It also looks to me like a meta refresh as well which has potential SEO problems. I would much prefer a 301 if they are really keen to redirect 404s.
The main reason for not redirecting 404s is that it stops you from seeing broken links on your website. Imagine you have a discreet link to a services page that is broken - you wouldn't be able to pick it up with link checkers like Xenu and it could go unnoticed for months if not years. Might be worth suggesting to them that they remove it.
-
This is not a normal behavior, you should respond to robots.txt, put the sitemap link in there or simply :
User-agent: *
Disallow:The actual robots.txt gives :
GET robots.txt 302 Found, which redirects to :
GET 404error.html 200 Ok, which redirect to the home with browser behavior :
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url=/">
You better change this to a normal response
-
Thanks for the input! I haven't had a chance to view their .htaccess file. I am still in the early stages of reviewing their site. I just wasn't sure if their would be a technical reason for them to do this or if it just happened by accident. It sounds like adding a basic robots.txt file would be the appropriate solution.
-
1. I wouldnt advise redirecting the robots.txt to redirect to home page. It seems that they hve a dynamic 404 redirect system - which when a URL doesnt exist the site redirects it to home. There are god and bad points about this strategy, hoever I would prefer NOT to do it.
2. Re getting site indexed - no it wouldnt hurt them, but would give you much less control over the robots directive, in case you want to add custom instructions. If Google crawlers cant get to it (as in its not user agent cloaked to allow the google bot) you will not be able to do so (eg excluding pages from being indexed via robots wont be ossible).
-
I would be surprised if they purposefully redirected it. Have you been able to take a look at what's in the .htaccess file? If you copy and paste what's in there I might be able to see what's going on with it.
Also, if it is being redirected then it won't get crawled and so it won't have any effect. That could be good or bad depending on what you had written in the .txt file.
EDIT:
Just had a quick look at the site. It seems to 404 straight away and then redirect. Therefore I imagine the robots.txt file doesn't exist and they have it set up to redirect 404ing pages to the homepage. Something that I would advise against (it's useful to know what's 404ing).
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Blocking pages from Moz and Alexa robots
Hello, We want to block all pages in this directory from Moz and Alexa robots - /slabinventory/search/ Here is an example page - https://www.msisurfaces.com/slabinventory/search/granite/giallo-fiesta/los-angeles-slabs/msi/ Let me know if this is a valid disallow for what I'm trying to. User-agent: ia_archiver
Technical SEO | | Pushm
Disallow: /slabinventory/search/* User-agent: rogerbot
Disallow: /slabinventory/search/* Thanks.0 -
Robots.txt and joomla
Hello, I use joomla for my website and automatically all those files are blocked is that good or bad, so I remove anything and if so why ? User-agent: *
Technical SEO | | seoanalytics
Disallow: /administrator/
Disallow: /cache/
Disallow: /components/
Disallow: /images/
Disallow: /includes/
Disallow: /installation/
Disallow: /language/
Disallow: /libraries/
Disallow: /media/
Disallow: /modules/
Disallow: /plugins/
Disallow: /templates/
Disallow: /tmp/
Disallow: /xmlrpc/ I also added to my robots.txt files my email address ( is that useful, I am afraid google passes PR to the email address )
and a javascript: void (0) because I have tabs on my webpage ( is that useful )
as well as a .pdf ( is it also useful ) any comments ? does anything need to be changed or is it ok ? Thank you,0 -
Is my robots.txt file working?
Greetings from medieval York UK 🙂 Everytime to you enter my name & Liz this page is returned in Google:
Technical SEO | | Nightwing
http://www.davidclick.com/web_page/al_liz.htm But i have the following robots txt file which has been in place a few weeks User-agent: * Disallow: /york_wedding_photographer_advice_pre_wedding_photoshoot.htm Disallow: /york_wedding_photographer_advice.htm Disallow: /york_wedding_photographer_advice_copyright_free_wedding_photography.htm Disallow: /web_page/prices.htm Disallow: /web_page/about_me.htm Disallow: /web_page/thumbnails4.htm Disallow: /web_page/thumbnails.html Disallow: /web_page/al_liz.htm Disallow: /web_page/york_wedding_photographer_advice.htm Allow: / So my question is please... "Why is this page appearing in the SERPS when its blocked in the robots txt file e.g.: Disallow: /web_page/al_liz.htm" ANy insights welcome 🙂0 -
Page authority has disappeared since redirect
As the title states, my page authority (PA) has completely disappeared for certain pages on my site.
Technical SEO | | Hughescov
I have recently had a redesign and optimised the page names, redirecting the page it has replaced.
This has been nearly 2 months now and the new pages are showing PA of 1 still.
The 301 redirects definitely work so what am I doing wrong? Thanks in advance!0 -
Redirecting Entire Microsite Content to Main Site Internal Pages?
I am currently working on improving site authority for a client site. The main site has significant authority, but I have learned that the company owns several other resource-focused microsites which are stagnant, but which have accrued significant page authority of their own (thought still less than the main site). Realizing the fault in housing good content on a microsite rather than the main site, my thought is that I can redirect the content of the microsites to internal pages on the main site as a "Resources" section. I am wondering a: if this is a good idea and b: the best way to transfer site authority from these microsites. I am also wondering how to organize the content and if, for example, an entire microsite domain (e.g. microsite.com) should in fact be redirected to internal resource pages (e.g. mainsite.com/resources). Any input would be greatly appreciated!
Technical SEO | | RightlookCreative1 -
301 Redirect From Dynamic Page To Static
I want to 301 redirect all "id" and "type" numbers from my page dynamic.php page (I have thousands of IDs and thousands of Types) all to a single URL. So for example the following.... www.mysite.com/dynamic.php?id=1&type=5 www.mysite.com/dynamic.php?id=2&type=5 www.mysite.com/dynamic.php?id=3&type=5 www.mysite.com/dynamic.php?id=1&type=6 www.mysite.com/dynamic.php?id=2&type=6 www.mysite.com/dynamic.php?id=3&type=6 ...would all be sent to: www.mysite.com/page.html How can this be done without doing a redirect for each ID/Type?
Technical SEO | | TheDude1 -
2 home page domains causing split in link juice
We have 2 home page domains that are resulting in a split in links. We have mysite.com and mysite.com/index.php. The site is on Joomla and when we try and re-direct the /index.php to just mysite.com is causing an infinite loop. I have done this on other platforms with no problems - is this an issue because of Joomla? How can we complete a 301 re-direct to consolidate our link juice to one domain url?
Technical SEO | | devonkrusich0 -
How to Redirect only specific pages to new domain
My HTACCESS FILE IS AS FOLLOWS: rewriteengine on
Technical SEO | | askthetrainer
rewritecond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mydomain.com$
rewriterule ^mydomain/(.*)$ "http://www.mydomain.com/$1" [R=301,L] #4d864805b49b5 I want to move ONLY specific pages from this domain to a new domain How do I edit my HTACCESS (which redirects http:// to www.) to move specific pages from old domain (which I have to delete) to new domain.... I.e. http://mydomaon.com/move.html needs to move to http://mynewdomain.com/move.html Where i can delete the original domains0