Does using robots.txt to block pages decrease search traffic?
-
I know you can use robots.txt to tell search engines not to spend their resources crawling certain pages.
So, if you have a section of your website that is good content, but is never updated, and you want the search engines to index new content faster, would it work to block the good, un-changed content with robots.txt? Would this content loose any search traffic if it were blocked by robots.txt? Does anyone have any available case studies?
-
If you block the pages from being crawled, you are also telling the search engines to not index the pages (they don't want to include something they haven't looked at). So yes, the traffic numbers from organic search will change if you block the pages in robots.txt.
-
Agreed, that is a better solution, but, I am still wondering if you block something with robots.txt, will that lead to a decrease in traffic? What if we have some duplicate content that is highly trafficked, if we block it with robots.txt, will the traffic numbers change?
-
You certainly don't want to block this content!
One thing I'd consider is the if-modified-since header, or other headers. Here are two articles that explain more about the concept of using headers to tell the search engines " this hasn't changed, don't bother crawling it". I haven't personally used this, but have read about it in many places.
http://www.feedthebot.com/ifmodified.html
http://searchengineland.com/how-to-improve-crawl-efficiency-with-cache-control-headers-88824
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
-
Google Manual Penalty Lifted - Why is my website still decreasing on traffic?
Hi there, I was hoping that somebody has a potential answer to this or if anyone else has experienced this issue. Our website has recently hit by a manual penalty (structured data wasn't matching the content on the page) After working hard on this to fix the issue across the site, we submitted a reconsideration request which was approved by Google a few days later. I understand that not all websites recover and it doesn't guarantee rankings will go back to normal, but it seems as if the traffic is continuing to drop at an even quicker rate. There's a number of small technical optimisations that have been briefed into the dev team such as: Redirecting duplicate versions, fixing redirects on internal links, There's also work on-page running in the background fixing up keyword cannibalization, consolidating content keyword mapping and ensuring the internal link structure is sound. Has this happened to anyone else before? If so, how did you recover? Any suggestions/advice would be really appreciated. Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dbutler9120 -
Show parts of page A on page B & C?
Good afternoon,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rayvensoft
A quick question. I am working on a website which has a large page with different sections. Lets say: Page 1
SECTION A
SECTION B
SECTION C Now, they are adding a new area where they want to show only certain sections, so it would look like this: Page 2
SECTION A Page 3
SECTION C Page 4
SECTION D So my question is, would a rel='canonical' tag back to Page 1 be the correct way of preempting any duplicate content issues? I do not need Page 2-4 to even be indexed, it is just a matter of usability and giving the users what they are looking for without all the rest of the extra stuff. Gracias. Tesekürler. Salamat Ko. Thanks. (bonus thumbs up for anybody who knows which languages each of those are) 🙂0 -
Robots.txt assistance
I want to block all the inner archive news pages of my website in robots.txt - we don't have R&D capacity to set up rel=next/prev or create a central page that all inner pages would have a canonical back to, so this is the solution. The first page I want indexed reads:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | theLotter
http://www.xxxx.news/?p=1 all subsequent pages that I want blocked because they don't contain any new content read:
http://www.xxxx.news/?p=2
http://www.xxxx.news/?p=3
etc.... There are currently 245 inner archived pages and I would like to set it up so that future pages will automatically be blocked since we are always writing new news pieces. Any advice about what code I should use for this? Thanks!0 -
Any downsides of (permanent)redirecting 404 pages to more generic pages(category page)
Hi, We have a site which is somewhat like e-bay, they have several categories and advertisements posted by customers/ client. These advertisements disappear over time and turn into 404 pages. We have the option to redirect the user to the corresponding category page, but we're afraid of any negative impact of this change. Are there any downsides, and is this really the best option we have? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vhendriks0 -
Do I need to disallow the dynamic pages in robots.txt?
Do I need to disallow the dynamic pages that show when people use our site's search box? Some of these pages are ranking well in SERPs. Thanks! 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | esiow20130 -
Using Images Instead of Text to Control Keywords on Page
We have recently updated a key page on our website. It is a template page that is used many times to display search results. The words "price", "revenue", and "cash flow", "not disclosed" are used for each listing on the page -- to minimize their impact on keyword density on the page we used images for these words. Here you can see some examples: http://www.businessbroker.net/State/Florida-Businesses_For_Sale.aspx http://www.businessbroker.net/City/Los Angeles-Businesses_For_Sale.aspx http://www.businessbroker.net/Industry/Auto_Car_Wash-Businesses_For_Sale.aspx You will note these words on this page are images and not regular text. We are certainly not doing this to "dupe" the visitors or Google -- we just want to ensure that each page has keywords pertinent to what the page is about. Bottom line question -- is this an OK practice? Are we running any risk with Google by doing this? I'm particularly nervous these days with all of the Google changes. Your thoughts and guidance on this issue would be much appreciated. Thanks. MWM
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MWM37720 -
Can obfuscated Javascript be used for too many links on a page?
Hi mozzers Just looking for opinions/answers on if it is ever appropriate to use obfuscated Javascript on links when a page has many links but they need to be there for usability? It seems grey/black hat to me as it shows users something different to Google (alarm bells are sounding already!) BUT if the page has many links it's losing juice which could be saved....... Any thoughts appreciated, thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TrevorJones0 -
Should I use the main keyword in the title tag for the site on all category pages?
I am pretty excited about changing all my title tags (for the most important 7 pages) since I have seen my rankings jump up in the SERP just by adding the main keyword for my website in the title tag. To make it easier I will explain my business. Simply, I run an online jewelry shop, so basically the keywords I want to use is "Jewelry online" and for the main categories "Necklace", "Rings" and "Bracelets". What I am unsure about is whether to use all the keywords in the main pages title tag or should I just use the main keyword "Jewelry online". I don’t want to create competition between my own pages of course. Jewelry Online - Trendy Fashion Jewelry | Homepage Or Jewelry Online - Necklace, Rings, Bracelets | Homepage And the same goes for the main categories, should I include "jewelry online" or not, like: Bracelets - Fashion Jewelry Online | Homepage Or Bracelets - Trendy_ Bangles_ and Arm Cuffs | Homepage Any suggestions what is the best practice for the title tag on main page and the main categories? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ikomorin0