Robot.txt pattern matching
-
Hola fellow SEO peoples!
Site: http://www.sierratradingpost.com
robot: http://www.sierratradingpost.com/robots.txt
Please see the following line: Disallow: /keycodebypid~*
We are trying to block URLs like this:
http://www.sierratradingpost.com/keycodebypid~8855/for-the-home~d~3/kitchen~d~24/
but we still find them in the Google index.
1. we are not sure if we need to specify the robot to use pattern matching.
2. we are not sure if the format is correct. Should we use Disallow: /keycodebypid*/ or /*keycodebypid/ or even /*keycodebypid~/?
What is even more confusing is that the meta robot command line says "noindex" - yet they still show up. <meta name="robots" content="noindex, follow, noarchive" />
Thank you!
-
ok, so not sure sure this was shared. Matt Cutts talking on this same subject.
| | <cite class="kvm">www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2giR-WKUfY</cite> |
-
John, The article was a real eye-opener!Thanks again!
-
Somehow Google is finding these pages, but you're disallowing the Googlebot from reading the page, so it doesn't know anything about the meta noindex tag on the page. If you have meta noindex tags on all of these pages, you can remove that line in your robots.txt preventing bots from reading these pages, and as Google crawls these pages, they should remove them from their SERPs.
-
Great point! I will remember that. However I have both the disallow line in the robots.txt file and I also have the noindex meta command. Yet Google shows 3000 of them!?!?!?!
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awww.sierratradingpost.com+keycodebypid
-
Well done John!!!
-
Hi,
then you have the robots.txt and the meta tag. I think its better the metatag (http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/robotstxt)
Have you WebMaster Tools in your web? you can test your robots.txt file (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=156449)
-
Here's a good SEOMoz post about this: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/robot-access-indexation-restriction-techniques-avoiding-conflicts. What's most likely happening is that the disallow in robots.txt is preventing the bots from indexing the page, so they're not going to find the meta noindex tag. If people link to one of these pages externally, the disallow in robots.txt does not prevent the page from appearing in search results.
The robots.txt syntax you're using now looks correct to me for what you're trying to do.
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
-
I have two robots.txt pages for www and non-www version. Will that be a problem?
There are two robots.txt pages. One for www version and another for non-www version though I have moved to the non-www version.
Technical SEO | | ramb0 -
Robot.txt : How to block a specific file type in several subdirectories ?
Hello everyone ! I need help setting up a robot.txt. I'm trying to block all pdf files in particular directories so I'm using this command. In the example below the line is blocking all .gif in the entire site. Block files of a specific file type (for example, .gif) | Disallow: /*.gif$ 2 questions : Can I use this command to specify one particular directory in which I want to block pdf files ? Will this line be recognized by googlebots ? Disallow: /fileadmin/xxxxxxx/xxx/xxxxxxx/*.pdf$ Then I realized that I would have to write as many lines as many directories there are in which I want to block pdf files. Let's say I want to block pdf files in all these 3 directories /fileadmin/directory1 /fileadmin/directory1/sub1 /fileadmin/directory1/sub1/pdf Is there a pattern-matching rule I could use to blocks access to pdf files in all subdirectories instead of writing 3x the above line for each subdirectory ? For exemple : Disallow: /fileadmin/directory1*/ Many thanks in advance for any insight you may have.
Technical SEO | | LabeliumUSA0 -
Little confused regarding robots.txt
Hi there Mozzers! As a newbie, I have a question that what could happen if I write my robots.txt file like this... User-agent: * Allow: / Disallow: /abc-1/ Disallow: /bcd/ Disallow: /agd1/ User-agent: * Disallow: / Hope to hear from you...
Technical SEO | | DenorL0 -
Robots.txt | any SEO advantage to having one vs not having one?
Neither of my sites has a robots.txt file. I guess I have never been bothered by any particular bot enough to exclude it. Is there any SEO advantage to having one anyways?
Technical SEO | | GregB1230 -
Exact URL Match For Ranking
Has anyone else run into this issue? I have a competitor that purchases domain names for popular inner pages we are trying to rank for. We are trying to build a brand, our competitors have a lower domain authority but rank higher for inner pages in the serps with VERY little content, backlinks/seo work, they host a single page and do a re-direct to their main site. Would this be a good long term strategy? EX. We sell golf clubs our brand name is golfcity (Ex only) and we carry callaway clubs, our competitor is also building a brand but they purchased callawayclubs.net and do a re-direct. They rank on page one for keywords callaway clubs. If I do try to do this does one have an advantage over another? .com. net .org. because Ive seem them all used and rank on page 1. Thank you!!!
Technical SEO | | TP_Marketing0 -
Exact match domain
Will buying an exact match domain and redirecting it to our main site a good idea, if such a domain is available ? What are the pros and cons ? Are exact match domains still powerful for ranking purpose ?
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050 -
Un-Indexing a Page without robots.txt or access to HEAD
I am in a situation where a page was pushed live (Went live for an hour and then taken down) before it was supposed to go live. Now normally I would utilize the robots.txt or but I do not have access to either and putting a request in will not suffice as it is against protocol with the CMS. So basically I am left to just utilizing the and I cannot seem to find a nice way to play with the SE to get this un-indexed. I know for this instance I could go to GWT and do it but for clients that do not have GWT and for all the other SE's how could I do this? Here is the big question here: What if I have a promotional page that I don't want indexed and am met with these same limitations? Is there anything to do here?
Technical SEO | | DRSearchEngOpt0 -
Robots.txt and canonical tag
In the SEOmoz post - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/robot-access-indexation-restriction-techniques-avoiding-conflicts, it's being said - If you have a robots.txt disallow in place for a page, the canonical tag will never be seen. Does it so happen that if a page is disallowed by robots.txt, spiders DO NOT read the html code ?
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050