Moz Crawl Test: WordPress sites with and without /feed and /trackback entires?
-
I have multiple WP websites and on some of the websites, on my Moz Crawl test, I see an entry for every blog post but also entries for /feed and /trackback for that single blog post. For example,
www...com/someArticle
www....com/someArticle/feed
www...com/someArticle/trackback
1. Can anyone explain why the Crawl test is picking up the /feed and /trackback items? Is it simply because they are 301 redirects to the original post (www...com/someArticle)?
2. What setting(s) in WordPress are making this information appear? Or is it just that the site(s) that have the /feed and /trackback are displaying "normal" behavior for a WP site with a lot of trackbacks and feed entires?
3. Should /fee and /trackback, as well as /author be blocked in robots.txt?
Thanks in advance for your advice and input!
-
I have the same issue but instead of it redirecting to the parent post its just going to a 404 page.
-
So I solved the problem (or at least figured where it was coming from). On this particular site, under the comments area, there is a link for "trackback url" and a link for "comments rss feed". Naturally these are ../trackback and ../blog so that's why the crawl is picking them up. They are 301 redirected to the "parent" page so that's why they are not a duplicate content issue. Thank to everyone for their help!
-
1. If you check the source code of your blog posts, there must be some sort of link to the feeds - possibly even in the header. I'm not 100% on how the Moz crawler operates (if it only spiders <a>anchor links or if it spiders referenced links in the header - pretty sure the latter) - but either way that's how they're finding it, through some sort of link on the page.</a>
<a>You could try running a crawl with Screaming Frog SEO Spider and see if it also picks up the feed URLs and Screaming Frog will show you where it found the links as well.
2. Good question. Your theme may be displaying links to these things somewhere - the best way to find out is to crawl with Screaming Frog and it will show you which pages link to your feed and trackback URLs. Then if you don't need them, you can go into the editor and remove them from the code.
3. I agree with Thomas here, I would not block them with robots.txt - rather I would see if you can fix them at the source and remove the links if they are not needed.
-Dan</a>
-
Thanks, I'll check it out!
-
Hi, you should never block feeds they're really pretty beneficial to your site. Take a look at this from Joost it will explain it much better than I can
http://yoast.com/example-robots-txt-wordpress/
All the best sincerely, Thomas
-
Thank you.
When you say "TrackBacks are from people posting either identical or similar content to WordPress.com", what do you mean? I thought trackbacks were notifications of links back when someone links to your content?
And why does the codex recommend blocking feeds and trackbacks in robots.txt?
Thanks again!
-
the TrackBacks are from people posting either identical or similar content to WordPress.com I would follow up with that. unless that person is you.
No do not block a feed with robots.txt and do not block the TrackBacks use automatics Digital millennium act takedown if somebody is stealing your content.
Sincerely,
Thomas
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
-
Moz Pro Tools
Hello I ran into a error while using Moz Pro Tools Crawl Site feature. Stating that my wordpress website could not be crawled. When contacting moz they sent me this screenshot stating the reason for this error is because of the odd ip address highlighted in yellow. Only time I've seen this particular ip-address is during local development. If anyone has any advice on how to fix this or what may have caused this issue. I feel this maybe effecting the site's overall search visibility. ednqnL7
Moz Pro | | willakawillow220 -
Moz Crawl Report more urls?
Hi. I have used Moz Crawl Test and get my 3,000 urls crawled no issue. However, my site has more than that, is it possible to crawl the entire website? Alot of the crawl urls in the Moz test are search string urls and filters so Ive probably wasted about 2,500 urls on filter urls. Any advise or alternative software that wont cost a fortune?
Moz Pro | | YNWA
Thanks0 -
How do I combat title tag issues in Moz because of long company/site name? [Currently using Yoast SEO Plugin]
I've only just started to dip my toe into the SEO pool, so please forgive me if this is a silly question. I've been working heavily in the Moz tool and the Yoast SEO plugin to clean up the meta descriptions on our site, as there were many pages without descriptions in place (we just transferred from a different CMS to Wordpress within the last month or so). Now I'm noticing on our Site Crawl that we have 60+ pages that have title elements that are considered too long. When I go in to fix these issues on our blog posts (as this is where most of the issues lie), Yoast is already giving me the green light on the title lengths. I've discovered that the reason why Moz is telling us that many of our site lengths are too long is because "| Parker Staffing Services" is added to the end of our title tags automatically. Deep breath Now that you've heard all of the backstory... Is there a way that I can prevent that site title (which is 26 characters all by itself! Talk about limiting!) from displaying on search engines when our blog posts or pages show up in search results? I've poked around in the Titles & Metas settings that come with Yoast, but I fear making too many changes will result in me screwing something up. Help an SEO beginner out? 🙂
Moz Pro | | giaciccone0 -
Canonicalisation/ Moz/ WP.
Hi, I've recently put a new site live using Wordpress, and have hooked it up to Moz Analytics. Moz is reporting >1000 pages with 'missing meta description page', and >250 with 'duplicate page content'. The issues seem to be being flagged by pages with '?sort=asc&view=main', ?show=paged&view=main, '?sort=ratedup&show=all&view=list', etc. I have a number of category pages, which users can filter by etc to give them the information in the way they want to see it. I have this ' I haven't got many pages indexed by Google yet, so can't see if they're hitting the same issues as Moz. Any help/ advice appreciated.
Moz Pro | | newstd1000 -
Interested in testing a new Moz product for Content Strategists?
We're building a new product for content professionals that helps with website auditing, content performance measurement and content discovery/curation. If you're a content strategist, blogger, editor, copywriter, SEO with a content focus or social media manager that curates content we'd love to hear your thoughts. Interested in a sneak peak of what's cooking? Either respond to this post or send me an email at [email protected]. Be sure to include your job function and the type of company your work for. Thanks all!
Moz Pro | | JayLeary5 -
Get into Google : New Sites
I have a brand new website. It was created 10 days ago. How long would it take for it to show up in search results? I understand that since the site is new, there are no sites sending it backlinks. Also, i have optimized the page for my keyword "xyz" and it received an A grade. The site does not figure even in the top 50 results. Please help me out. It is a one page web application that needs to drive traffic to survive.
Moz Pro | | dl_s0 -
Moz Data Issues?
Since the launch of Moz something or other has been wrong with my data. Is everyone having these issues? Or is it just me?
Moz Pro | | EcommerceSite0 -
How do I retrieve crawl and ranking data about a site from the past?
Hey. One of my main clients has asked to see the crawl data and rankings data for the past eight months. He wants to have tangible evidence of the effects of Penguin. I would like that info too. Is it possible to retrieve that information on a weekly crawl and ranking basis through SEO Moz and if so, how do you do it? I simply want to show a graph, timeline and brief explanation across several main keywords... Help me as you guys always do - You rock Best Ben
Moz Pro | | creativeguy0