Do i have my robots.txt file set up properly
-
Hi, just doing some seo on my site and i am not sure if i have my robots file set correctly. i use joomla and my website is www.in2town.co.uk.
here is my robots file, does this look correct to you
User-agent: *
Disallow: /administrator/
Disallow: /cache/
Disallow: /components/
Disallow: /includes/
Disallow: /installation/
Disallow: /language/
Disallow: /libraries/
Disallow: /media/
Disallow: /modules/
Disallow: /plugins/
Disallow: /templates/
Disallow: /tmp/
Disallow: /xmlrpc/many thanks
-
thanks for this, i will add a sitemap now
-
thanks for this. been having for a long time trouble with a site map. the reason is, i use joomla 1.5 and i am not sure the best way to have it set or which is the best tool to use.
my articles change all the time and not sure how many of the articles i should have in the site map or to have just the sections.
on an old site i had all the articles, well up to 2,000 and that gain me a lot of traffic but with the new site i took that down
-
Yes, this does look good. However, usually the robots.txt will define a location of a sitemap. Not absolutely needed, but good to know.
Here is an example of one of our client's wordpress sites.
User-agent: * Disallow: /wp-admin Disallow: /another-post Disallow: /dolor-and-the-sit-amet/ Disallow: /hello-world-2-2/ Disallow: /second-page-post/ Disallow: /hello-world-2-3/ Disallow: /tag/ Disallow: /events/ Disallow: /wp-content/ Sitemap: http://backcountrysnow.com/sitemap.xml.gz
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
-
Search Console rejecting XML sitemap files as HTML files, despite them being XML
Hi Moz folks, We have launched an international site that uses subdirectories for regions and have had trouble getting pages outside of USA and Canada indexed. Google Search Console accounts have finally been verified, so we can submit the correct regional sitemap to the relevant search console account. However, when submitting non-USA and CA sitemap files (e.g. AU, NZ, UK), we are receiving a submission error that states, "Your Sitemap appears to be an HTML page," despite them being .xml files, e.g. http://www.t2tea.com/en/au/sitemap1_en_AU.xml. Queries on this suggest it's a W3 Cache plugin problem, but we aren't using Wordpress; the site is running on Demandware. Can anyone guide us on why Google Search Console is rejecting these sitemap files? Page indexation is a real issue. Many thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | SearchDeploy0 -
Why Google ranks a page with Meta Robots: NO INDEX, NO FOLLOW?
Hi guys, I was playing with the new OSE when I found out a weird thing: if you Google "performing arts school london" you will see w w w . mountview . org. uk at the 3rd position. The point is that page has "Meta Robots: NO INDEX, NO FOLLOW", why Google indexed it? Here you can see the robots.txt allows Google to index the URL but not the content, in article they also say the meta robots tag will properly avoid Google from indexing the URL either. Apparently, in my case that page is the only one has the tag "NO INDEX, NO FOLLOW", but it's the home page. so I said to myself: OK, perhaps they have just changed that tag therefore Google needs time to re-crawl that page and de-index following the no index tag. How long do you think it will take to don't see that page indexed? Do you think it will effect the whole website, as I suppose if you have that tag on your home page (the root domain) you will lose a lot of links' juice - it's totally unnatural a backlinks profile without links to a root domain? Cheers, Pierpaolo
Technical SEO | | madcow780 -
Are robots.txt wildcards still valid? If so, what is the proper syntax for setting this up?
I've got several URL's that I need to disallow in my robots.txt file. For example, I've got several documents that I don't want indexed and filters that are getting flagged as duplicate content. Rather than typing in thousands of URL's I was hoping that wildcards were still valid.
Technical SEO | | mkhGT0 -
We just recently moved site domains, and I tried to set up a new campaign for the new root domain, but it threw an error?
It threw an error saying we cannot access the SERPs of this site? Any reason why? It is an https:// site instead of the http://, but even our older domain had an https://
Technical SEO | | josh1230 -
IIS 7.5 - Duplicate Content and Totally Wrong robot.txt
Well here goes! My very first post to SEOmoz. I have two clients that are hosted by the same hosting company. Both sites have major duplicate content issues and appear to have no internal links. I have checked this both here with our awesome SEOmoz Tools and with the IIS SEO Tool Kit. After much waiting I have heard back from the hosting company and they say that they have "implemented redirects in IIS7.5 to avoid duplicate content" based on the following article: http://blog.whitesites.com/How-to-setup-301-Redirects-in-IIS-7-for-good-SEO__634569104292703828_blog.htm. In my mind this article covers things better: www.seomoz.org/blog/what-every-seo-should-know-about-iis. What do you guys think? Next issue, both clients (as well as other sites hosted by this company) have a robot.txt file that is not their own. It appears that they have taken one client's robot.txt file and used it as a template for other client sites. I could be wrong but I believe this is causing the internal links to not be indexed. There is also a site map, again not for each client, but rather for the client that the original robot.txt file was created for. Again any input on this would be great. I have asked that the files just be deleted but that has not occurred yet. Sorry for the messy post...I'm at the hospital waiting to pick up my bro and could be called to get him any minute. Thanks so much, Tiff
Technical SEO | | TiffenyPapuc0 -
Best use of robots.txt for "garbage" links from Joomla!
I recently started out on Seomoz and is trying to make some cleanup according to the campaign report i received. One of my biggest gripes is the point of "Dublicate Page Content". Right now im having over 200 pages with dublicate page content. Now.. This is triggerede because Seomoz have snagged up auto generated links from my site. My site has a "send to freind" feature, and every time someone wants to send a article or a product to a friend via email a pop-up appears. Now it seems like the pop-up pages has been snagged by the seomoz spider,however these pages is something i would never want to index in Google. So i just want to get rid of them. Now to my question I guess the best solution is to make a general rule via robots.txt, so that these pages is not indexed and considered by google at all. But, how do i do this? what should my syntax be? A lof of the links looks like this, but has different id numbers according to the product that is being send: http://mywebshop.dk/index.php?option=com_redshop&view=send_friend&pid=39&tmpl=component&Itemid=167 I guess i need a rule that grabs the following and makes google ignore links that contains this: view=send_friend
Technical SEO | | teleman0 -
Internal file extension canonicalization
Ok no doubt this is straightforward, however seem to be finding to hard to find a simple answer; our websites' internal pages have the extension .html. Trying to the navigate to that internal url without the .html extension results in a 404. The question is; should a 401 be used to direct to the extension-less url to future proof? and should internal links direct to the extension-less url for the same reason? Hopefully that makes sense and apologies for what I believe is a straightforward answer;
Technical SEO | | jg1000 -
Robots.txt file question? NEver seen this command before
Hey Everyone! Perhaps someone can help me. I came across this command in the robots.txt file of our Canadian corporate domain. I looked around online but can't seem to find a definitive answer (slightly relevant). the command line is as follows: Disallow: /*?* I'm guessing this might have something to do with blocking php string searches on the site?. It might also have something to do with blocking sub-domains, but the "?" mark puzzles me 😞 Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks, Rob
Technical SEO | | RobMay0