What can I do if Google Webmaster Tools doesn't recognize the robots.txt file?
-
I'm working on a recently hacked site for a client and and in trying to identify how exactly the hack is running I need to use the fetch as Google bot feature in GWT.
I'd love to use this but it thinks the robots.txt is blocking it's acces but the only thing in the robots.txt file is a link to the sitemap.
Unde the Blocked URLs section of the GWT it shows that the robots.txt was last downloaded yesterday but it's incorrect information. Is there a way to force Google to look again?
-
No, but they might write to it, modify it, or do all sorts of other nasty stuff I've seen hackers do when they get a hold of any writeable file on a system.
-
lol it's a robots text file. what are they going to do. Steal it? I should have clarified do a 777 to make sure that is not your problem, then yes change the permission to be tighter
-
Eesh I don't recommend 777. 644 or, if you're going to change it right back, 755 at most.
-
File permission maybe? Change it to 777 and try it again
-
If you have shell access on Linux you can use wget or GET or run lynx.
If google is getting the wrong robots file then your web server must be sending out something other than what you think is the robots file.
What happens if you do this in your browser:
-
Looking in my log files, Google hits robots.txt just about every time it crawls our site.
What are you trying to accomplish using fetch as Googlebot? Any chance CURL could do the job for you, or another tool that ignores robots.txt?
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
-
Robots txt. in page with 301 redirect
We currently have a a series of help pages that we would like to disallow from our robots txt. The thing is that these help pages are located in our old website, which now has a 301 redirect to current site. Which is the proper way to go around? 1- Add the pages we want to disallow to the robots.txt of the new website? 2- Break the redirect momentarily and add the pages to the robots.txt of the old one? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Kilgray0 -
Google how deal with licensed content when this placed on vendor & client's website too. Will Google penalize the client's site for this ?
One of my client bought licensed content from top vendor of Health Industry. This same content is on the vendor's website & my client's site also but on my site there is a link back to vendor is placed which clearly tells to anyone that this is a licensed content & we bought from this vendor. My client bought paid top quality content for best source of industry but at this same this is placed on vendor's website also. Will Google penalize my client's website for this ? Niche is HEALTH
Technical SEO | | sourabhrana1 -
What's going on with google index - javascript and google bot
Hi all, Weird issue with one of my websites. The website URL: http://www.athletictrainers.myindustrytracker.com/ Let's take 2 diffrenet article pages from this website: 1st: http://www.athletictrainers.myindustrytracker.com/en/article/71232/ As you can see the page is indexed correctly on google: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dfbzhHkl5K4J:www.athletictrainers.myindustrytracker.com/en/article/71232/10-minute-core-and-cardio&hl=en&strip=1 (that the "text only" version, indexed on May 19th) 2nd: http://www.athletictrainers.myindustrytracker.com/en/article/69811 As you can see the page isn't indexed correctly on google: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:KeU6-oViFkgJ:www.athletictrainers.myindustrytracker.com/en/article/69811&hl=en&strip=1 (that the "text only" version, indexed on May 21th) They both have the same code, and about the dates, there are pages that indexed before the 19th and they also problematic. Google can't read the content, he can read it when he wants to. Can you think what is the problem with that? I know that google can read JS and crawl our pages correctly, but it happens only with few pages and not all of them (as you can see above).
Technical SEO | | cobano0 -
Can't for the life of me figure out how this is possible !! Any ideas ?
I would imagine it's not all that easy to rank on 1st page ( not going for 1st position here ) for https://www.google.com.au/search?q=credi+cards. I am looking at the AU market. For some reason which I can't figure out Everyday Money Credit Card ( https://www.woolworthsmoney.com.au/ ) ranks number 4. The home page redirect to https://www.woolworthsmoney.com.au/wowm/wps/wcm/connect/wowmoney/wowmoney/home/home/ Why have your homepage in this format ? I would love to hear any theories you guys might have. It does not look like they have a strong link profile , I could not figure out how old the domain was or what other possible reason there is for the site to rank .
Technical SEO | | RuchirP0 -
I have 404 errors but can't find where these links are?
The 4xx report had 0 errors, and then on the recent crawl it found over 200. They are all variations on real URLs e.g.: Real URL: http://www.bullseyeuk.com/10-up-deluxe-literature-holder.html 404 Error URL: http://www.bullseyeuk.com/10-up-deluxe-literature-holder.html �� None of them are linked to the root domain and I can't find where they are coming from. Any ideas? Thanks Jack
Technical SEO | | JackMurphy0 -
404 Errors in Google Webmaster Tools
Hello, Google webmaster tools is returning our URLs as 404 errors: http://www.celebritynetworth.com/watch/D5GrrPEN9Oc/tom-mccarthy-floating/ When we enter the URL into the browser it loads the page just fine. Is there a way to determine why Google Webmaster Tools is returning a 404 error when the link loads perfectly fine in a browser? Thanks, Alex
Technical SEO | | Anti-Alex0 -
Google webmasters shows 37K not found errors
Hello we are using Joomla as our cms, months ago we used a component to create friendly urls, lots of them got indexed by google, testing the component we created three different types of URL, the problem now is that all of this tests are showing in google webmasters as 404 errors, 37,309 not found pages and this number is increasing everyday. What do you suggest to fix this?? Regards.
Technical SEO | | Zertuxte0 -
How can I get Google to crawl my site daily?
I was wndering if there was a trick to getting google to crawl my website daily?
Technical SEO | | labradoodlelocator0