Blocked by meta-robots but there is no robots file
-
OK, I'm a little frustred here. I've waited a week for the next weekly index to take place after changing the privacy setting in a wordpress website so Google can index, but I still got the same problem. Blocked by meta-robots, no index, no follow. But I do not see a robot file anywhere and the privacy setting in this Wordpress site is set to allow search engines to index this site. Website is www.marketalert.ca
What am I missing here? Why can't I index the rest of the website and is there a faster way to test this rather than wait another week just to find out it didn't work again?
-
The .htaccess file is in placing directing www to non www, so I don't see what else I could do with that. I forgot to mention the website was recently overhauled by someone else, and they are having me help with SEO. Not sure if that has anything to do with it. It looks like the .htaccess should be reversed so the non www points to the www which has more value. Someone else designed this site and they are having me do the SEO on it for them.
-
The issue might be the forwarding from www.yourdomain.ca to yourdomain.ca
look at http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/pages?site=marketalert.ca%2F
and here http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/pages?site=www.marketalert.ca%2F
..some are indexed on with www and other without www. , this is your main issue.
recommendation:
- revisit the htaccess file or where the redirect has been set DNS..
- choose one with www or without and stick to it.
- revicit your external links and make the changes to your links
- create new sitemap and resubmit to SearchEngines
-
I ran the SEO web crawler and it finished already. Successfully crawled all pages. I still have to wait for another week to get the main campaign updated and see results there, but I believe it may work too now.
I guess I solved my own problem after being directed to robots.txt by Jim. I found that the Wordpress plugin for SEO xml sitemap creator was the problem because it created a virtual robots.txt file which sent me on a wild goose chase looking for a robots.txt file which didn't exist. Creating a robots.txt file allowing all seems to be the solultion, incase anyone else has this same problem.
-
If you can, follow up either way - happy to help you get it debugged!
-
I was able to update my sitemap.xml with Google webmaster tools no problem. I'm not 100% confident though that means the entire site is searchable by the spiders. I guess I'll know for sure in a few days tops.
-
I agree with Jim. Update your sitemap.xml files with Google Webmaster Tools. That will also help you identify problems you might be missing.
-
I've done some more looking into it and seems to be a problem when Wordpress uses the XML site generator plugin. It creates a virtual robot.txt file, which is why I couldn't find the robot.txt file. Apparently the only fix is to replace it with an actual robot.txt file forcing it to allow all.
I just replaced the robots.txt file with a real one allowing all. SEOmoz estimates a few days to test site crawl and it's another 7 days before the next scheduled crawl. I'd kinda like to find out sooner if it's not going to work. There must be a faster test. I don't need a detailed test, just a basic test that says, YEP, we can see this many pages or something like that.
-
hi
your robots.txt file is located here http://marketalert.ca/robots.txt, which is the root of your website directory.
this is the actual location of your sitemap file (http://marketalert.ca/sitemap.xml), does the Google WT show any issues about the sitemap file could not be found?
You might need to resubmit the sitemap file, if there are any changes, of course with the updated version of your site.
hope this helps.
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
-
Shopify robots blocking stylesheets causing inconsistent mobile-friendly test results?
One of our shopify sites suffered an extreme rankings drop. Recent Google algorithm updates include mobile first so I tested the site and our team got different mobile-friendly test results. However, search console is also flagging pages as not mobile friendly. So, while us end-users see the site as OK on mobile, this may not be the case for Google? I researched more about inconsistent mobile test results and found answers that say it may be due to robots.txt blocking stylesheets. Do you recognise any directory blocked that might be affecting Google's rendering? We can't edit shopify robots.txt unfortunately. Our dev said the only thing that stands out to him is Disallow: /design_theme_id and the rest shouldn't be hindering Google bots. Here are some of the files blocked: Disallow: /admin
Technical SEO | | nhhernandez
Disallow: /cart
Disallow: /orders
Disallow: /checkout
Disallow: /9103034/checkouts
Disallow: /9103034/orders
Disallow: /carts
Disallow: /account
Disallow: /collections/+
Disallow: /collections/%2B
Disallow: /collections/%2b
Disallow: /blogs/+
Disallow: /blogs/%2B
Disallow: /blogs/%2b
Disallow: /design_theme_id
Disallow: /preview_theme_id
Disallow: /preview_script_id
Disallow: /discount/*
Disallow: /gift_cards/*
Disallow: /apple-app-site-association0 -
Robots.txt error
Moz Crawler is not able to access the robots.txt due to server error. Please advice on how to tackle the server error.
Technical SEO | | Shanidel0 -
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 -
What's wrong with this robots.txt
Hi. really struggling with the robots.txt file
Technical SEO | | Leonie-Kramer
this is it: User-agent: *
Disallow: /product/ #old sitemap
Disallow: /media/name.xml When testing in w3c.org everything looks good, testing is okay, but when uploading it to the server, Google webmaster tools gives 3 errors. Checked it with my collegue we both don't know what's wrong. Can someone take a look at this and give me the solution.
Thanx in advance! Leonie1 -
Empty Meta Robots Directive - Harmful?
Hi, We had a coding update and a side-effect of that was that our directive was emptied, in other words it now reads as: on all of the site. I've since noticed that Google's cache date on all of the pages - at least, the ones I tested - have a Cached date of no later than 17 December '12 - that's the Monday after the directive was removed on mass. So, A, does anyone have solid evidence of an empty directive causing problems? Past experience, Matt Cutts, Fishkin quote, etc. And then B - It seems fairly well correlated but, does my entire site's homogenous Cached date point to this tag removal? Or is it fairly normal to have a particular cache date across a large site (we're a large ecommerce site). Our site: http://www.zando.co.za/ I'm having the directive reinstated as soon as Dev permitting. And then, for extra credit, is there a way with Google's API, or perhaps some other tool, to run an arbitrary list and retrieve Cached dates? I'd want to do this for diagnosis purposes and preferably in a way that OK with Google. I'd avoid CURLing for the cached URL and scraping out that dates with BASH, or any such kind of thing. Cheers,
Technical SEO | | RocketZando0 -
Why is there 4 lines in competitors meta description in SERP?
Hi there, I have noticed several sites now display 4 lines of meta description in Google. Has anyone else seen this? Any help would be appreciated...thoughts? Barry
Technical SEO | | HaymarketMediaGroupLtd0 -
Robots.txt and robots meta
I have an odd situation. I have a CMS that has a global robots.txt which has the generic User-Agent: *
Technical SEO | | Highland
Allow: / I also have one CMS site that needs to not be indexed ever. I've read in various pages (like http://www.jesterwebster.com/robots-txt-vs-meta-tag-which-has-precedence/22 ) that robots.txt always wins over meta, but I have also read that robots.txt indicates spiderability whereas meta can control indexation. I just want the site to not be indexed. Can I leave the robots.txt as is and still put NOINDEX in the robots meta?0
