Robots.txt
-
Hi All
Having a robots.txt looking like the below will this stop Google crawling the site
User-agent: *
-
If that is the only line in your robots.txt file then it really shouldn't accomplish anything. It's like saying, "Hey...all search engines...take note of this....oh forget it, there's nothing to see here."
I agree with Dave...try to fetch the page in Webmaster tools (Google Search Console). You can also use the Webmaster Tools robots.txt tester which often will tell you if there are issues.
- Hi this is what we thought but Google has not indexed any pages
How old is the site? It can take weeks for a new site to get indexed and then to get ranked as well. Do you see any pages on a site: search for your domain? (i.e. site:example.com). This might sound silly, but are you sure that there is no noindex tag on the page?
-
Via Search Console try to "Fetch As Google" and assuming that works without errors use the submit function. You'll know very quickly whether you've got technical issues and get the page into the index very quickly.
-
Hey, throw us a link to your robots.txt file and we can take a look, probably tell you pretty quickly. Without seeing it, we're all pretty much just taking guesses.
-
David's spot on. The User-agent: * mean this section applies to all robots. If you want Google (or any robot) to index your whole site, no need for a robots.txt file.
-
From your original post I presumed you had not wanted Google to index your pages?
If you want Google to index your pages it can take some time to happen naturally. You might want to submit a sitemap and ask Google to crawl your site within Webmaster Tools.
Robots.txt is normally only used to block crawlers, so you will not need to put any code in there for it to allow Google to crawl.
-
Hi this is what we thought but Google has not indexed any pages
-
Wouldn't have thought so, you'd need to include this line of code as well:
Disallow: /
That will stop anything from crawling the site.
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
-
Google indexing despite robots.txt block
Hi This subdomain has about 4'000 URLs indexed in Google, although it's blocked via robots.txt: https://www.google.com/search?safe=off&q=site%3Awww1.swisscom.ch&oq=site%3Awww1.swisscom.ch This has been the case for almost a year now, and it does not look like Google tends to respect the blocking in http://www1.swisscom.ch/robots.txt Any clues why this is or what I could do to resolve it? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | zeepartner0 -
HTTP Status showing up in opensiteexplorer top pages as blocked by robot.txt file
I am trying to find an answer to this question it has alot of url on this page with no data when i go into the data source and search for noindex or robot.txt but the site is visible in the search engines ?
Technical SEO | | ReSEOlve0 -
A few misc Webmaster tools questions & Robots.txt etc
Hi I have a few general misc questions re Robots.tx & GWT: 1) In the Robots.txt file what do the below lines block, internal search ? Disallow: /?
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence
Disallow: /*? 2) Also the sites feeds are blocked in robots.txt, why would you want to block a sites feeds ? **3) **What's the best way to deal with the below: - old removed page thats returning a 500 response code ? - a soft 404 for an old removed page that has no current replacement old removed pages returning a 404 The old pages didn't have any authority or inbound links hence is it best/ok to simply create a url removal request in GWT ? Cheers Dan0 -
Do i have my robots.txt file set up properly
Hi, just doing some seo on my site and i am not sure if i have my robots file set correctly. i use joomla and my website is www.in2town.co.uk. here is my robots file, does this look correct to you User-agent: *
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-184886
Disallow: /administrator/
Disallow: /cache/
Disallow: /components/
Disallow: /includes/
Disallow: /installation/
Disallow: /language/
Disallow: /libraries/
Disallow: /media/
Disallow: /modules/
Disallow: /plugins/
Disallow: /templates/
Disallow: /tmp/
Disallow: /xmlrpc/ many thanks1 -
Meta-robots Nofollow on logins and admins
In my SEO MOZ reports I am getting over 400 errors as Meta-robots Nofollow. These are all leading to my admin login page which I do not want robots in. Should I put some code on these pages so the robots know this and don't attempt to and I do not get these errors in my reports?
Technical SEO | | Endora0 -
Is there a reason to set a crawl-delay in the robots.txt?
I've recently encountered a site that has set a crawl-delay command set in their robots.txt file. I've never seen a need for this to be set since you can set that in Google Webmaster Tools for Googlebot. They have this command set for all crawlers, which seems odd to me. What are some reasons that someone would want to set it like that? I can't find any good information on it when researching.
Technical SEO | | MichaelWeisbaum0 -
Restricted by robots.txt does this cause problems?
I have restricted around 1,500 links which are links to retailers website and links that affiliate links accorsing to webmaster tools Is this the right approach as I thought it would affect the link juice? or should I take the no follow out of the restricted by robots.txt file
Technical SEO | | ocelot0 -
Should search pages be disallowed in robots.txt?
The SEOmoz crawler picks up "search" pages on a site as having duplicate page titles, which of course they do. Does that mean I should put a "Disallow: /search" tag in my robots.txt? When I put the URL's into Google, they aren't coming up in any SERPS, so I would assume everything's ok. I try to abide by the SEOmoz crawl errors as much as possible, that's why I'm asking. Any thoughts would be helpful. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | MichaelWeisbaum0