Robots.txt in subfolders and hreflang issues
-
A client recently rolled out their UK business to the US. They decided to deploy with 2 WordPress installations:
UK site - https://www.clientname.com/uk/ - robots.txt location: UK site - https://www.clientname.com/uk/robots.txt
US site - https://www.clientname.com/us/ - robots.txt location: UK site - https://www.clientname.com/us/robots.txtWe've had various issues with /us/ pages being indexed in Google UK, and /uk/ pages being indexed in Google US.
They have the following hreflang tags across all pages:
We changed the x-default page to .com 2 weeks ago (we've tried both /uk/ and /us/ previously).
Search Console says there are no hreflang tags at all.
Additionally, we have a robots.txt file on each site which has a link to the corresponding sitemap files, but when viewing the robots.txt tester on Search Console, each property shows the robots.txt file for https://www.clientname.com only, even though when you actually navigate to this URL (https://www.clientname.com/robots.txt) you’ll get redirected to either https://www.clientname.com/uk/robots.txt or https://www.clientname.com/us/robots.txt depending on your location.
Any suggestions how we can remove UK listings from Google US and vice versa?
-
Hi there!
Ok, it is difficult to know all the ins and outs without looking at the site, but the immediate issue is that your robots.txt setup is incorrect. robots.txt files should be one per subdomain, and cannot exist inside sub-folders:
A **
robots.txt
**file is a file at the root of your site that indicates those parts of your site you don’t want accessed by search engine crawlersFrom Google's page here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6062608?hl=en
You shouldn't be blocking Google from either site, and attempting to do so may be the problem with why your hreflang directives are not being detected. You should move to having a single robots.txt file located at https://www.clientname.com/robots.txt, with a link to a single sitemap index file. That sitemap index file should then link to each of your two UK & US sitemap files.
You should ensure you have hreflang directives for every page. Hopefully after these changes you will see things start to get better. Good luck!
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
-
Role of Robots.txt and Search Console parameters settings
Hi, wondering if anyone can point me to resources or explain the difference between these two. If a site has url parameters disallowed in Robots.txt is it redundant to edit settings in Search Console parameters to anything other than "Let Googlebot Decide"?
Technical SEO | | LivDetrick0 -
Use hreflang language or hreflang language & country code
Hi, our website has 7 languages, but only one English version (site.com/en). When I add a hreflang tag below, is it enough to just target English search queries no matter where they come from by using only the language code, or should I specify all countries (UK, USA, Ireland, Australia, NZ, ...) by using separate hreflangs? Same for Portuguese, Dutch & French... Should I just add the language tags or specify all countries? Like I said, we don't have localized versions for those countries, with specific content targeting those countries.
Technical SEO | | jorisbrabants0 -
Why is robots.txt blocking URL's in sitemap?
Hi Folks, Any ideas why Google Webmaster Tools is indicating that my robots.txt is blocking URL's linked in my sitemap.xml, when in fact it isn't? I have checked the current robots.txt declarations and they are fine and I've also tested it in the 'robots.txt Tester' tool, which indicates for the URL's it's suggesting are blocked in the sitemap, in fact work fine. Is this a temporary issue that will be resolved over a few days or should I be concerned. I have recently removed the declaration from the robots.txt that would have been blocking them and then uploaded a new updated sitemap.xml. I'm assuming this issue is due to some sort of crossover. Thanks Gaz
Technical SEO | | PurpleGriffon0 -
Noindex nofollow issue
Hi, For some reason 2 pages on my website, time to time get noindex nofollow tags they disappear from search engine, i have to log in my thesis wp theme and uncheck box for "noindex" "nofollow" and them update, in couple days my website is back up. here is screen shot http://screencast.com/t/A6V6tIr2Cb6 Is that something in thesis theme that cause the problem? even though i unchecked the box and updated but its still stays checked http://screencast.com/t/TnjDcYfsH4sq appreciated for your help!
Technical SEO | | tonyklu0 -
Can't find mistake in robots.txt
Hi all, we recently filled our robots.txt file to prevent some directories from crawling. Looks like: User-agent: * Disallow: /Views/ Disallow: /login/ Disallow: /routing/ Disallow: /Profiler/ Disallow: /LILLYPROFILER/ Disallow: /EventRweKompaktProfiler/ Disallow: /AccessIntProfiler/ Disallow: /KellyIntProfiler/ Disallow: /lilly/ now, as Google Webmaster Tools hasn't updated our robots.txt yet, I checked our robots.txt in some ckeckers. They tell me that the User agent: * contains an error. **Example:** **Line 1: Syntax error! Expected <field>:</field> <value></value> 1: User-agent: *** **`I checked other robots.txt written the same way --> they work,`** accordign to the checkers... **`Where the .... is the mistake???`** ```
Technical SEO | | accessKellyOCG0 -
Issue: Duplicate Pages Content
Hello, Following the setting up of a new campaign, SEOmoz pro says I have a duplicate page content issue. It says the follwoing are duplicates: http://www.mysite.com/ and http://www.mysite.com/index.htm This is obviously true, but is it a problem? Do I need to do anything to avoid a google penalty? The site in question is a static html site and the real page only exsists at http://www.mysite.com/index.htm but if you type in just the domain name then that brings up the same page. Please let me know what if anything I need to do. This site by the way, has had a panda 3.4 penalty a few months ago. Thanks, Colin
Technical SEO | | Colski0 -
Robots.txt file question? NEver seen this command before
Hey Everyone! Perhaps someone can help me. I came across this command in the robots.txt file of our Canadian corporate domain. I looked around online but can't seem to find a definitive answer (slightly relevant). the command line is as follows: Disallow: /*?* I'm guessing this might have something to do with blocking php string searches on the site?. It might also have something to do with blocking sub-domains, but the "?" mark puzzles me 😞 Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks, Rob
Technical SEO | | RobMay0 -
Robots.txt
My campaign hse24 (www.hse24.de) is not being crawled any more ... Do you think this can be a problem of the robots.txt? I always thought that Google and friends are interpretating the file correct, seen that he site was crawled since last week. Thanks a lot Bernd NB: Here is the robots.txt: User-Agent: * Disallow: / User-agent: Googlebot User-agent: Googlebot-Image User-agent: Googlebot-Mobile User-agent: MSNBot User-agent: Slurp User-agent: yahoo-mmcrawler User-agent: psbot Disallow: /is-bin/ Allow: /is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/WFS/HSE24-DE-Site/de_DE/-/EUR/hse24_Storefront-Start Allow: /is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/WFS/HSE24-AT-Site/de_DE/-/EUR/hse24_Storefront-Start Allow: /is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/WFS/HSE24-CH-Site/de_DE/-/CHF/hse24_Storefront-Start Allow: /is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/WFS/HSE24-DE-Site/de_DE/-/EUR/hse24_DisplayProductInformation-Start Allow: /is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/WFS/HSE24-AT-Site/de_DE/-/EUR/hse24_DisplayProductInformation-Start Allow: /is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/WFS/HSE24-CH-Site/de_DE/-/CHF/hse24_DisplayProductInformation-Start Allow: /is-bin/intershop.static/WFS/HSE24-Site/-/Editions/ Allow: /is-bin/intershop.static/WFS/HSE24-Site/-/Editions/Root%20Edition/units/HSE24/Beratung/
Technical SEO | | remino630