I have two sitemaps which partly duplicate - one is blocked by robots.txt but can't figure out why!
-
Hi, I've just found two sitemaps - one of them is .php and represents part of the site structure on the website. The second is a .txt file which lists every page on the website. The .txt file is blocked via robots exclusion protocol (which doesn't appear to be very logical as it's the only full sitemap). Any ideas why a developer might have done that?
-
There are standards for the sitemaps .txt and .xml sitemaps, where there are no standards for html varieties. Neither guarantees the listed pages will be crawled, though. HTML has some advantage of potentially passing pagerank, where .txt and .xml varieties don't.
These days, xml sitemaps may be more common than .txt sitemaps but both perform the same function.
-
yes, sitemap.txt is blocked for some strange reason. I know SEOs do this sometimes for various reasons, but in this case it just doesn't make sense - not to me, anyway.
-
Thanks for the useful feedback Chris - much appreciated - Is it good practice to use both - I guess it's a good idea if onsite version only includes top-level pages? PS. Just checking nature of block!
-
Luke,
The .php one would have been created as a navigation tool to help users find what they're looking for faster, as well as to provide html links to search engine spiders to help them reach all pages on the site. On small sites, such sitemaps often include all pages of the site, on large ones, it might just be high level pages. The .txt file is non html and exists to provide search engines with a full list of urls on the site for the sole purpose of helping search engines index all the site's pages.
The robots.txt file can also be used to specify the location of the sitemap.txt file such as
sitemap: http://www.example.com/sitemap_location.txt
Are you sure the sitemap is being blocked by the robots.txt file or is the robots.txt file just listing the location of the sitemap.txt?
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
-
Two A Records or one CNAME and one A Record for www / naked domain?
What's the best way to point a domain to an IP address? Two A records one with host @ and the other with host www ? One A record pointing to the naked domain
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aj613
One CNAME record with host www pointing to nakeddomain.com Something else? Thanks so much! This seems so basic, but always seems to stump me. I'm using WordPress, if it makes difference.0 -
Duplicate Content through 'Gclid'
Hello, We've had the known problem of duplicate content through the gclid parameter caused by Google Adwords. As per Google's recommendation - we added the canonical tag to every page on our site so when the bot came to each page they would go 'Ah-ha, this is the original page'. We also added the paramter to the URL parameters in Google Wemaster Tools. However, now it seems as though a canonical is automatically been given to these newly created gclid pages; below https://www.google.com.au/search?espv=2&q=site%3Awww.mypetwarehouse.com.au+inurl%3Agclid&oq=site%3A&gs_l=serp.3.0.35i39l2j0i67l4j0i10j0i67j0j0i131.58677.61871.0.63823.11.8.3.0.0.0.208.930.0j3j2.5.0....0...1c.1.64.serp..8.3.419.nUJod6dYZmI Therefore these new pages are now being indexed, causing duplicate content. Does anyone have any idea about what to do in this situation? Thanks, Stephen.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MyPetWarehouse0 -
Why Doesn't Moz Use Wistia Backlink Embed Feature
I am using Wistia videos for my website and they have an embed feature which gives option to include a backlink to one's site, which I thought was great. I took a random Moz whiteboard Friday video (http://moz.com/blog/what-should-i-put-on-the-homepage-whiteboard-friday) and I do not see the backlink feature if I click on "embed" button below the video. Question: why would Moz not use such feature? Bad SEO or simply because Moz does not need it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi50 -
Don't affiliate programs have an unfair impact on a company's ability to compete with bigger businesses?
So many coupon sites and other websites these days will only link to your website if you have a relationship with Commission Junction or one of the other large affiliate networks. It seems to me that links on these sites are really unfair as they allow businesses with deep pockets to acquire links unequitably. To me it seems like these are "paid links", as the average website cannot afford the cost of running an affiliate program. Even worse, the only reason why these businesses are earning a link is because they have an affiliate program; that to me should violate some sort of Google rule about types and values of links. The existence of an affiliate program as the only reason for earning a link is preposterous. It's just as bad as paid link directories that have no editorial standards. I realize the affiliate links are wrapped in CJ's code, so that mush diminish the value of the link, but there is still tons of good value in having the brand linked to from these high authority sites.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | williamelward0 -
Syndicating duplicate content descriptions - Can these be canonicalised?
Hi there, I have a site that contains descriptions of accommodation and we also use this content to syndicate to our partner sites. They then use this content to fill their descriptions on the same accommodation locations. I have looked at copyscape and Google and this does appear as duplicate content across these partnered sites. I do understand as well that certain kinds of content will not impact Google's duplication issue such as locations, addresses, opening times those kind of things, but would actual descriptions of a location around 250 words long be seen and penalised as duplicate content? Also is there a possible way to canonicalise this content so that Google can see it relates back to our original site? The only other way I can think of getting round a duplicate content issue like this is ordering the external sites to use tags like blockquotes and cite tags around the content.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MalcolmGibb0 -
Robots.txt 404 problem
I've just set up a wordpress site with a hosting company who only allow you to install your wordpress site in http://www.myurl.com/folder as opposed to the root folder. I now have the problem that the robots.txt file only works in http://www.myurl./com/folder/robots.txt Of course google is looking for it at http://www.myurl.com/robots.txt and returning a 404 error. How can I get around this? Is there a way to tell google in webmaster tools to use a different path to locate it? I'm stumped?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK0 -
What if you can't navigate naturally to your canonicalized URL?
Assume this situation for a second... Let's say you place a rel= canonical tag on a page and point to the original/authentic URL. Now, let's say that that original/authentic URL is also populated into your XML sitemap... So, here's my question... Since you can't actually navigate to that original/authentic URL (it still loads with a 200, it's just not actually linkded to from within the site itself), does that create an issue for search engines? Last consideration... The bots can still access those pages via the canonical tag and the XML sitemap, it's just that the user wouldn't be able to access those original/authentic pages in their natural site navigation. Thanks, Rodrigo
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlgoFreaks0 -
Does It Really Matter to Restrict Dynamic URLs by Robots.txt?
Today, I was checking Google webmaster tools and found that, there are 117 dynamic URLs are restrict by Robots.txt. I have added following syntax in my Robots.txt You can get more idea by following excel sheet. #Dynamic URLs Disallow: /?osCsidDisallow: /?q= Disallow: /?dir=Disallow: /?p= Disallow: /*?limit= Disallow: /*review-form I have concern for following kind of pages. Shorting by specification: http://www.vistastores.com/table-lamps?dir=asc&order=name Iterms per page: http://www.vistastores.com/table-lamps?dir=asc&limit=60&order=name Numbering page of products: http://www.vistastores.com/table-lamps?p=2 Will it create resistance in organic performance of my category pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit0