Robots.txt anomaly
-
Hi,
I'm monitoring a site thats had a new design relaunch and new robots.txt added.
Over the period of a week (since launch) webmaster tools has shown a steadily increasing number of blocked urls (now at 14).
In the robots.txt file though theres only 12 lines with the disallow command, could this be occurring because a line in the command could refer to more than one page/url ? They all look like single urls for example:
Disallow: /wp-content/plugins
Disallow: /wp-content/cache
Disallow: /wp-content/themesetc, etc
And is it normal for webmaster tools reporting of robots.txt blocked urls to steadily increase in number over time, as opposed to being identified straight away ?
Thanks in advance for any help/advice/clarity why this may be happening ?
Cheers
Dan
-
many thanks for that Dan !
-
As far as I thought, the important thing is that your feed shows up in feed readers. Can you subscribe to and view your RSS feed in a variety of different feed readers?
Yes, so long as the ? is utilized only in ways in which would result in duplicate content, or content that would not be desirable to crawl, it will have that effect.
-Dan
-
Many Thanks for your comments Dan !
So it doesnt matter that the feeds not going to be crawled, dont we want feeds to be crawled usually?
Blocking anything with a ? is surely good then isnt it since prevents all the dupe content etc one gets from search results ?
Yes my clients webmaster set it up
-
Hi Dan
I see no reason to disallow the feed like that by default, unless there is some reason I don't know about. But it won't harm anything either.
The second part blocks any URL which begins with a ? (question mark). This would block anything that has a parameter in the URL - most commonly a search word, pagination, filtering settings etc.
As far as I'm aware this is not going to be damaging to the site, but it's not the default setting. Did someone set it up that way for you?
My robots.txt shows the default WordPress settings: http://www.evolvingseo.com/robots.txt
-
Hi Dan
Yes please find below, please can you also confirm if the bottom 2 lines refer to blocking internal search results ?:
Disallow: /feed
Disallow: */feedDisallow: /?
Disallow: /*?Many Thanks
Dan
-
Hi Dan
Can you share the exact line disallowing RSS?
Thanks!
-Dan
-
sorry 1 more question, i see that the webmaster has disallowed the feeds in the robots.txt file is this normal/desirable, i would have thought one would want rss feeds crawled by Google ?
-
nice 1 cheers Jesse !
-
Your assumption is correct. The disallows you listed are directories, not pages. Therefore, anything within the Plugins folder will be disallowed, same with the cache and themes folder.
So you may have multiple files (and I'm sure you do) within each of those folders.
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 subdomains with Robots.txt file
We noticed that Google is indexing our pre-production site ibweb.prod.interstatebatteries.com in addition to indexing our main site interstatebatteries.com. Can you all help shed some light on the proper way to no-index our pre-prod site without impacting our live site?
Technical SEO | | paulwatley0 -
IIS 7.5 - Duplicate Content and Totally Wrong robot.txt
Well here goes! My very first post to SEOmoz. I have two clients that are hosted by the same hosting company. Both sites have major duplicate content issues and appear to have no internal links. I have checked this both here with our awesome SEOmoz Tools and with the IIS SEO Tool Kit. After much waiting I have heard back from the hosting company and they say that they have "implemented redirects in IIS7.5 to avoid duplicate content" based on the following article: http://blog.whitesites.com/How-to-setup-301-Redirects-in-IIS-7-for-good-SEO__634569104292703828_blog.htm. In my mind this article covers things better: www.seomoz.org/blog/what-every-seo-should-know-about-iis. What do you guys think? Next issue, both clients (as well as other sites hosted by this company) have a robot.txt file that is not their own. It appears that they have taken one client's robot.txt file and used it as a template for other client sites. I could be wrong but I believe this is causing the internal links to not be indexed. There is also a site map, again not for each client, but rather for the client that the original robot.txt file was created for. Again any input on this would be great. I have asked that the files just be deleted but that has not occurred yet. Sorry for the messy post...I'm at the hospital waiting to pick up my bro and could be called to get him any minute. Thanks so much, Tiff
Technical SEO | | TiffenyPapuc0 -
Robots.txt issue - site resubmission needed?
We recently had an issue when a load of new files were transferred from our dev server to the live site, which unfortunately included the dev site's robots.txt file which had a disallow:/ instruction. Bad! Luckily I spotted it quickly and the file has been replaced. The extent of the damage seems to be that some descriptions aren't displaying and we're getting a message about robots.txt in the SERPs for a few keywords. I've done a site: search and generally it seems to be OK for 99% of our pages. Our positions don't seem to be affected right now but obviously it's not great for the CTRs on those keywords affected. My question is whether there is anything I can do to bring the updated robots.txt file to Google's attention? Or should we just wait and sit it out? Thanks in advance for your answers!
Technical SEO | | GBC0 -
What does it mean by 'blocked by Meta Robot'? How do I fix this?
When i get my crawl diagnostics, I am getting a blocked by Meta Robot, which means that my page is not being indexed in the search engines... obviously this is a major issue for organic traffic!!! What does it actually mean, and how can i fix it?
Technical SEO | | rolls1230 -
Confused about robots.txt
There is a lot of conflicting and/or unclear information about robots.txt out there. Somehow, I can't make out what's the best way to use robots even after visiting the official robots website. For example I have the following format for my robots. User-agent: * Disallow: javascript.js Disallow: /images/ Disallow: /embedconfig Disallow: /playerconfig Disallow: /spotlightmedia Disallow: /EventVideos Disallow: /playEpisode Allow: / Sitemap: http://www.example.tv/sitemapindex.xml Sitemap: http://www.example.tv/sitemapindex-videos.xml Sitemap: http://www.example.tv/news-sitemap.xml Is this correct and/or recommended? If so, then how come I see a list of over 200 or so links blocked by robots when Im checking out Google Webmaster Tools! Help someone, anyone! Can't seem to understand this robotic business! Regards,
Technical SEO | | Netpace0 -
Does RogerBot read URL wildcards in robots.txt
I believe that the Google and Bing crawlbots understand wildcards for the "disallow" URL's in robots.txt - does Roger?
Technical SEO | | AspenFasteners0 -
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: http://www.radisphere.net/
Technical SEO | | kchandler0 -
How do I use the Robots.txt "disallow" command properly for folders I don't want indexed?
Today's sitemap webinar made me think about the disallow feature, seems opposite of sitemaps, but it also seems both are kind of ignored in varying ways by the engines. I don't need help semantically, I got that part. I just can't seem to find a contemporary answer about what should be blocked using the robots.txt file. For example, I have folders containing site comps for clients that I really don't want showing up in the SERPS. Is it better to not have these folders on the domain at all? There are also security issues I've heard of that make sense, simply look at a site's robots file to see what they are hiding. It makes it easier to hunt for files when they know the directory the files are contained in. Do I concern myself with this? Another example is a folder I have for my xml sitemap generator. I imagine google isn't going to try to index this or count it as content, so do I need to add folders like this to the disallow list?
Technical SEO | | SpringMountain0