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,
-
Google may still index pages excluded by robots.txt if the pages are backlinked either internally or externally.
For best results, use meta noindex to tell search engines they're not allowed to show the link in results, and meta nofollow to tell robots not to follow any links on the page.
Webmaster Tools Help: Using meta tags to block access to your site
You can also explicitly address goooglebot in the meta tag, as opposed to just robots. If you use both a robots.txt and meta robots tags and there are conflicting directives, googlebot will follow the most restrictive one.
-
I would also recommend to go to the site configuration - crawler access page in Google Webmaster and test many of your sites URL's to ensure that robots can access them. Test every unique URL format on your site like the search results page, product pages, category pages, etc... I always use this tool whenever I make any change in the robots.txt
-
Hi,
Allow: / isn't valid syntax in a robots.txt file, Anything that isn't disallowed is allowed by default.
Other than that all looks good. Perhaps the 200 or so links to blocked pages were indexed before the robots.txt was last updated with the disallows?
Regards
Aran
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
-
Using one robots.txt for two websites
I have two websites that are hosted in the same CMS. Rather than having two separate robots.txt files (one for each domain), my web agency has created one which lists the sitemaps for both websites, like this: User-agent: * Disallow: Sitemap: https://www.siteA.org/sitemap Sitemap: https://www.siteB.com/sitemap Is this ok? I thought you needed one robots.txt per website which provides the URL for the sitemap. Will having both sitemap URLs listed in one robots.txt confuse the search engines?
Technical SEO | | ciehmoz0 -
Will it be possible to point diff sitemap to same robots.txt file.
Will it be possible to point diff sitemap to same robots.txt file.
Technical SEO | | nlogix
Please advice.0 -
2 sitemaps on my robots.txt?
Hi, I thought that I just could link one sitemap from my site's robots.txt but... I may be wrong. So, I need to confirm if this kind of implementation is right or wrong: robots.txt for Magento Community and Enterprise ...
Technical SEO | | Webicultors
Sitemap: http://www.mysite.es/media/sitemap/es.xml
Sitemap: http://www.mysite.pt/media/sitemap/pt.xml Thanks in advance,0 -
One server, two domains - robots.txt allow for one domain but not other?
Hello, I would like to create a single server with two domains pointing to it. Ex: domain1.com -> myserver.com/ domain2.com -> myserver.com/subfolder. The goal is to create two separate sites on one server. I would like the second domain ( /subfolder) to be fully indexed / SEO friendly and have the robots txt file allow search bots to crawl. However, the first domain (server root) I would like to keep non-indexed, and the robots.txt file disallowing any bots / indexing. Does anyone have any suggestions for the best way to tackle this one? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Dave1000 -
Robots.txt on refinements
In dealing with Panda do you think it is a good idea to put all refinements for category pages in the robots.txt file? We already have a lot as noindex, follow but I am wondering if it would be better to address from a crawl perspective as the pages are probably thin duplicate content to Google.
Technical SEO | | Gordian0 -
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 -
Do I need robots.txt and meta robots?
If I can manage to tell crawlers what I do and don't want them to crawl for my whole site via my robots.txt file, do I still need meta robots instructions?
Technical SEO | | Nola5040