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
-
Site Hack In Meta Description
Hey MOZ Community, I am looking for some help in identifying where the following meta description is coming from on this home page - https://www.apins.com. I have scrubbed through the page source without being able to locate where the content is being pulled from. The website is built on WordPress and metas were updated using Yoast, but I am wondering if an installed plugin could be the culprit. On top of this, I have had a developer take a look for the "hack" and they have assured that the issue has been removed. I have submitted the URL in GSC a couple of times to be re-indexed but have not had much luck. Any thoughts would be much appreciated, the displayed description is below. The health screening plays http://buyviagraonlineccm.com/ a significant and key role in detecting potentially life-threatening illnesses such as cancer, heart ...
Technical SEO | | jordankremer0 -
Pages being flagged in Search Console as having a "no-index" tag, do not have a meta robots tag??
Hi, I am running a technical audit on a site which is causing me a few issues. The site is small and awkwardly built using lots of JS, animations and dynamic URL extensions (bit of a nightmare). I can see that it has only 5 pages being indexed in Google despite having over 25 pages submitted to Google via the sitemap in Search Console. The beta Search Console is telling me that there are 23 Urls marked with a 'noindex' tag, however when i go to view the page source and check the code of these pages, there are no meta robots tags at all - I have also checked the robots.txt file. Also, both Screaming Frog and Deep Crawl tools are failing to pick up these urls so i am a bit of a loss about how to find out whats going on. Inevitably i believe the creative agency who built the site had no idea about general website best practice, and that the dynamic url extensions may have something to do with the no-indexing. Any advice on this would be really appreciated. Are there any other ways of no-indexing pages which the dev / creative team might have implemented by accident? - What am i missing here? Thanks,
Technical SEO | | NickG-1230 -
Unfamiliar Meta Description Tags
I'm working with a client who uses a CMS which loads meta tags into their site through its backend. On-page I see this in the source:
Technical SEO | | medtouch0 -
Robots.txt on refinements
In dealing with Panda do you think it is a good idea to put all refinements for category pages in the robots.txt file? We already have a lot as noindex, follow but I am wondering if it would be better to address from a crawl perspective as the pages are probably thin duplicate content to Google.
Technical SEO | | Gordian0 -
Robots.txt & Mobile Site
Background - Our mobile site is on the same domain as our main site. We use a folder approach for our mobile site abc.com/m/home.html We are re-directing traffic to our mobile site vie device detection and re-direction exists for a handful of pages of our site ie most of our pages do not redirect the user to a mobile equivalent page. Issue – Our mobile pages are being indexed in desktop Google searches Input Required – How should we modify our robots.txt so that the desktop google index does not index our mobile pages/urls User-agent: Googlebot-Mobile Disallow: /m User-agent: `YahooSeeker/M1A1-R2D2` Disallow: /m User-agent: `MSNBOT_Mobile` Disallow: /m Many thanks
Technical SEO | | CeeC-Blogger0 -
Duplicate Meta Description in GWMT
We've just discovered that there are multiple duplicate URLs indexed for a site that we're working on. It seems that when new versions of the site was developed in the last couple of years, there were new page names and URL structures that were used. All of these seem to be showing up as Duplicate Meta Descriptions in Google's WMT, which is not surprising as they are basically the same page with the same content that are just sitting on different page names/URLs. This is an example of the situation, where URL 5 is the current version. Note: all the others are still live and resolve, although they are not linked to from the current site. URL 1: www.example.com/blue-tshirts.html (Version 1 - January 2010) URL 2: www.example.com/blue-t-shirts.html (Version 2 - July 2010) URL 3: www.example.com/blue_t_shirts.html (Version 3 - November 2010) URL 4: www.example.com/buy/blue_tshirts.html (Version 4 - January 2011) URL 5: www.example.com/buy/bluetshirts.html (Version 5 - April 2011) Presumably, this is a clear case of duplicate content. QUESTION: In order to solve it, shall we 301 all of the previous URLs to the current one - ie. Redirect URLs 1-4 to URL 5? Or, should some of them be NoIndexed? To complicate matters, there is Pagination on most of them. For example: URL 1: www.example.com/blue-tshirts.html (Version 1 - January 2010) URL 1a: www.example.com/page-1/blue-tshirts.html URL 1b: www.example.com/page-2/blue-tshirts.html URL 1c: www.example.com/page-3/blue-tshirts.html URL 4: www.example.com/buy/blue_tshirts.html URL 4a: www.example.com/buy/page-1/blue_tshirts.html URL 4b: www.example.com/buy/page-2/blue_tshirts.html URL 4c: www.example.com/buy/page-3/blue_tshirts.html URL 5: www.example.com/buy/bluetshirts.html URL 5a: www.example.com/buy/page-1/bluetshirts.html URL 5b: www.example.com/buy/page-2/bluetshirts.html URL 5c: www.example.com/buy/page-3/bluetshirts.html Since URL 5 is the current site, we are going to 'NoIndex, Follow' URLs 5a, 5b and 5c, which is what we understand to be the correct thing to do for paginated pages. QUESTION: What shall we do with URLs 1a, 1b and 1c? Should we apply the same "No Index, Follow" OR should they be 301'd to their respective counterparts in 5a, 5b and 5c? QUESTION: In the same way, since URL 4 is the version just before the current live Version 5, does it make a different on whether the paginated pages (ie 4a, 4b and 4c) should be No Indexed or 301'd? Thanks in advance for all responses and suggestions, it's greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | orangechew0 -
SeoMoz robot is not able to crawl my website.
Hi, SeoMoz robot crawls only two web pages of my website. I contacts seomoz team and they told me that the problem is because of Javascript use. What is the solution to this? Should I contact my webdesign company and ask them to remove Javascript code?
Technical SEO | | ashish2110 -
Robots.txt
Hi everyone, I just want to check something. If you have this entered into your robots.txt file: User-agent: *
Technical SEO | | PeterM22
Disallow: /fred/ This wouldn't block /fred-review/ from being crawled would it? Thanks0