Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Invisible robots.txt?
-
So here's a weird one...
Client comes to me for some simple changes, turns out there are some major issues with the site, one of which is that none of the correct content pages are showing up in Google, just ancillary (outdated) ones. Looks like an issue because even the main homepage isn't showing up with a "site:domain.com"
So, I add to Webmaster Tools and, after an hour or so, I get the red bar of doom, "robots.txt is blocking important pages." I check it out in Webmasters and, sure enough, it's a "User agent: * Disallow /" ACK!
But wait... there's no robots.txt to be found on the server. I can go to domain.com/robots.txt and see it but nothing via FTP. I upload a new one and, thankfully, that is now showing but I've never seen that before.
Question is: can a robots.txt file be stored in a way that can't be seen?
Thanks!
-
Hi Josh
Did you ever find out how this was happening?
I've got the same issue with a wordpress site.. no robots.txt visible in FTP but it is accessible in a browser to view. -
I'm seeing the meta tag that's added for the first option:
<meta name="robots" content="index, follow" />
... but I could actually access a file at domain.com/robots.txt that had the content mentioned above. When I logged in via FTP, it wasn't there. I added an actual file there with the correct information and reloaded it to make sure it was showing the correct information.
I tested it on my local install and I'm not seeing a robots file being generated.
Very odd!
-
Yes, you probably answered your own question. In WordPress, there are two different settings under Settings > Privacy:
-
I would like my site visible to everyone, including search engines and archivers.
-
I would like to block search engines, but allow normal visitors
If option #2 was selected, WordPress doesn't create a robots.txt file for you but instead it automatically generates a tag on every single page.
I hope that helps!
-
-
Just make sure you don't set that Privacy setting in a live directory. It takes weeks/months to fully recover.
-
This is interesting. I am currently working on the robots.txt and testing it for different purposes. I also thought to do some test with wordpress websites as well so thanks for the update I’ll keep that in mind before actually testing different stuff.
Thanks!
-
I should mention that this is a WordPress site and, with that, I may have answered my own question. Perhaps WordPress generates a robots.txt dynamically when the setting is active at Settings > Privacy?
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
-
Robots.txt allows wp-admin/admin-ajax.php
Hello, Mozzers!
Technical SEO | | AndyKubrin
I noticed something peculiar in the robots.txt used by one of my clients: Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php What would be the purpose of allowing a search engine to crawl this file?
Is it OK? Should I do something about it?
Everything else on /wp-admin/ is disallowed.
Thanks in advance for your help.
-AK:2 -
Robots.txt in subfolders and hreflang issues
A client recently rolled out their UK business to the US. They decided to deploy with 2 WordPress installations: UK site - https://www.clientname.com/uk/ - robots.txt location: UK site - https://www.clientname.com/uk/robots.txt
Technical SEO | | lauralou82
US site - https://www.clientname.com/us/ - robots.txt location: UK site - https://www.clientname.com/us/robots.txt We've had various issues with /us/ pages being indexed in Google UK, and /uk/ pages being indexed in Google US. They have the following hreflang tags across all pages: We changed the x-default page to .com 2 weeks ago (we've tried both /uk/ and /us/ previously). Search Console says there are no hreflang tags at all. Additionally, we have a robots.txt file on each site which has a link to the corresponding sitemap files, but when viewing the robots.txt tester on Search Console, each property shows the robots.txt file for https://www.clientname.com only, even though when you actually navigate to this URL (https://www.clientname.com/robots.txt) you’ll get redirected to either https://www.clientname.com/uk/robots.txt or https://www.clientname.com/us/robots.txt depending on your location. Any suggestions how we can remove UK listings from Google US and vice versa?0 -
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 -
Log in, sign up, user registration and robots
Hi all, We have an accommodation site that asks users only to register when they want to book a room, in the last step. Though this is the ideal situation when you have tons of users, nowadays we are having around 1500 - 2000 per day and making tests we found out that if we ask for a registration (simple, 1 click FB) we mail them all and through a good customer service we are increasing our sales. That is why, we would like to ask users to register right after the home page ie Home/accommodation or and all the rest. I am not sure how can I make to make that content still visible to robots.
Technical SEO | | Eurasmus.com
Will the authentication process block google crawling it? Maybe something we can do? We are not completely sure how to proceed so any tip would be appreciated. Thank you all for answering.3 -
Blocked jquery in Robots.txt, Any SEO impact?
I've heard that Google is now indexing links and stuff available in javascript and jquery. My webmastertools is showing that some links are blocked in robots.txt of jquery. Sorry I'm not a developer or designer. I want to know is there any impact of this on my SEO? and also how can I unblock it for the robots? Check this screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/3VDWikC.png
Technical SEO | | hammadrafique0 -
Two META Robots tags on a page - which will win?
Hi, Does anybody know which meta-robots tag will "win" if there is more than one on a page? The situation:
Technical SEO | | jmueller
our CMS is not very flexible and so we have segments of META-Tags on the page that originate from templates.
Now any author can add any meta-tag from within his article-editor.
The logic delivering the pages does not care if there might be more than one meta-robots tag present (one from template, one from within the article). Now we could end up with something like this: Which one will be regarded by google & co?
First?
Last?
None? Thanks a lot,
Jan0 -
Will an XML sitemap override a robots.txt
I have a client that has a robots.txt file that is blocking an entire subdomain, entirely by accident. Their original solution, not realizing the robots.txt error, was to submit an xml sitemap to get their pages indexed. I did not think this tactic would work, as the robots.txt would take precedent over the xmls sitemap. But it worked... I have no explanation as to how or why. Does anyone have an answer to this? or any experience with a website that has had a clear Disallow: / for months , that somehow has pages in the index?
Technical SEO | | KCBackofen0 -
Google insists robots.txt is blocking... but it isn't.
I recently launched a new website. During development, I'd enabled the option in WordPress to prevent search engines from indexing the site. When the site went public (over 24 hours ago), I cleared that option. At that point, I added a specific robots.txt file that only disallowed a couple directories of files. You can view the robots.txt at http://photogeardeals.com/robots.txt Google (via Webmaster tools) is insisting that my robots.txt file contains a "Disallow: /" on line 2 and that it's preventing Google from indexing the site and preventing me from submitting a sitemap. These errors are showing both in the sitemap section of Webmaster tools as well as the Blocked URLs section. Bing's webmaster tools are able to read the site and sitemap just fine. Any idea why Google insists I'm disallowing everything even after telling it to re-fetch?
Technical SEO | | ahockley0