Blocking https from being crawled
-
I have an ecommerce site where https is being crawled for some pages. Wondering if the below solution will fix the issue
www.example.com will be my domain
In the nav there is a login page www.example.com/login which is redirecting to the https://www.example.com/login
If I just disallowed /login in the robots file wouldn't it not follow the redirect and index that stuff?
The redirect part is what I am questioning.
-
Correct once /login gets redirected to https://www.example.com/login all nav links etc are https
What I ended up doing was blocking /login in robots and now doing canonicals on https as well as nofollow the /login link that is in the nav that redirects
Willl see what happens now.
-
So, the "/login" page gets redirected to https: and then every link on that page goes secure and Google crawls them all? I think blocking the "/login" page is a perfectly good way to go here - cut the crawl path, and you'll cut most of the problem.
You could request removal of "/login" in Google Webmaster Tools, too. Sometimes, I find that Robots.txt isn't great at removing pages that are already indexed. I would definitely add the canonical as well, if it's feasible. Cutting the path may not cut the pages that have already been indexed with https:.
Sorry, I'd actually reverse that:
(1) Add the canonicals, and let Google sweep up the duplicates
(2) A few weeks later, block the "/login" page
Sounds counter-intuitive, but if you block the crawl path to the https: pages first, then Google won't crawl the canonical tags on those versions. Use canonical to clean up the index, and then block the page to prevent future problems.
-
Gotcha. Yea I commented above how I was going to add a canonical as well as a noindex in the meta but was curious how it handled the redirect that was happening.
thanks for your help
-
Yea I was going to nofollow the link in the nav and add a meta tag but was curious how the robots file would handle this since the url is a redirect.
Thanks for your input
-
The pages that are being crawled under https, are the same pages available under http as well ? If yes, can you just add a canonical tag on these pages to go to the http version. That should fix it. And if your login page is the entry point, your fix will help as well. But then as Rebekah said, what if somebody is linking to your https page. I would suggest you look into making a canonical tag on these pages to http if that makes sense and is doable.
-
You can disallow the https portion in robots.txt, but remember robots.txt isn't always a sure fire way of not getting an area of your site crawled. If you have other important content to crawl from the secured page, be careful you are not blocking robots from there.
If this is linked to other places on the web, and the link doesn't include no-follow, search engines may still crawl the page. Can you change the link in your navigation to no-follow as well? I would also add a meta noindex tag to the page itself, and a canonical tag to the https version.
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
-
What is a good crawl budget?
Hi Community! I am in the process of updating sitemaps and am trying to obtain a standard for what is considered "strong" crawl budget? Every documentation I've found includes how to make it better or what to watch out for. However, I'm looking for an amount to obtain for (ex: 60% of the sitemap has been crawled, 100%, etc.)
Technical SEO | | yaelslater1 -
Some bots excluded from crawling client's domain
Hi all! My client is in healthcare in the US and for HIPAA reasons, blocks traffic from most international sources. a. I don't think this is good for SEO b. The site won't allow Moz bot or Screaming Frog bot to crawl it. It's so frustrating. We can't figure out what mechanism they are utilizing to execute this. Any help as we start down the rabbit hole to remedy is much appreciated. thank you!
Technical SEO | | SimpleSearch0 -
Proper 301 redirect code for http to https
I see lots of suggestions on the web for forwarding http to https. I've got several existing sites that want to take advantage of the SSL boost for SEO (however slight) and I don't want to lose SEO placements in the process. I can force all pages to be viewed through the SSL - that's no problem. But for SEO reasons, do I need to do a 301 redirect line of code for every page in the site to the new "https" version? Or is there a way to catch all with one line of code that Google, etc. will recognize & honor?
Technical SEO | | wcksmith10 -
Google Crawling Issues! How Can I Get Google to Crawl My Website Regularly?
Hi Everyone! My website is not being crawled regularly by Google - there are weeks when it's regular but for the past month or so it does not get crawled for seven to eight days. There are some specific pages, that I want to get ranked but they of late are not being crawled AT ALL unless I use the 'Fetch As Google' tool! That's not normal, right? I have checked and re-checked the on-page metrics for these pages (and the website as a whole, backlinking is a regular and ongoing process as well! Sitemap is in place too! Resubmitted it once too! This issue is detrimental to website traffic and rankings! Would really appreciate insights from you guys! Thanks a lot!
Technical SEO | | farhanm1 -
Understanding the actions needed from a Crawl Report
I've just joined SEOMOZ last week and have not even received my first full-crawl yet, but as you know, I do get the re-crawl report. It shows I have 50 301's and 20 rel canonical's. I'm still very confused as to what I'm supposed to fix...And, all the rel canonical's are my sites main pages, so hence I am still equally confused as to what the canonical is doing and how do I properly setup my site. I'm a technical person and can grasp most things fairly quickly, but on this the light bulb is taking a little while longer to fire-up 🙂 If my question wasn't total jibberish and you can help shed some light, I would be forever grateful. Thank you.
Technical SEO | | apmgsmith0 -
Having some weird crawl issues in Google Webmaster Tools
I am having a large amount of errors in the not found section that are linked to old urls that haven't been used for 4 years. Some of the ulrs being linked to are not even in the structure that we used to use for urls. Never the less Google is saying they are now 404ing and there are hundreds of them. I know the best way to attack this is to 301 them, but I was wondering why all of these errors would be popping up. I cant find anything in the google index searching for the link in "" and in webmaster tools it shows unavailable as where these are being linked to from. Any help would be awesome!
Technical SEO | | Gordian1 -
Should I Block Tag, Category, Author Pages
Just finished reviewing the first crawl of my first SEOmoz campaign for a site that I am working on. The site I"m working on uses Wordpress as a CMS, and most if not all of the warnings and notices have to do with author, category, and tag pages. Should I block these from being indexed? Why or why not?
Technical SEO | | Falconberg0 -
Two basic questions re. Crawl Diagnostic results
I'm a novice...I've just run my crawl diagnostics and I wonder how important is it to a) Have meta-descriptions on every page, b) Have all titles less than 70 characters? Thanks in advance. Dan.
Technical SEO | | danfk0