Best practices for robotx.txt -- allow one page but not the others?
-
So, we have a page, like domain.com/searchhere, but results are being crawled (and shouldn't be), results look like domain.com/searchhere?query1. If I block /searchhere? will it block users from crawling the single page /searchere (because I still want that page to be indexed).
What is the recommended best practice for this?
-
SEOmoz used to use Google Search for the site. I am confident Google has a solid method for keeping their own results clean.
It appears SEOmoz recently changed their search widget. If you examine the URL you shared, notice none of the search results actually appear in the HTML of the page. For example, load the view-source URL and perform a find (CTRL+F) for "testing" which is the subject of the search. There are no results. Since the results are not in the page's HTML, they would not get indexed.
-
If Google is viewing the search result pages as soft 404s, then yes, adding the noindex tag should resolve the problem.
-
And, because google can currently crawl these search result pages, there are a number of soft 404 pages popping up. Would adding a noindex tag to these pages fix the issue?
-
Thanks for the links and help.
How does seomoz keep search results from being indexed? They don't block search results with robots.txt and it doesn't appear that they add the noindex tag to the search result pages.(ex: view-source:http://www.seomoz.org/pages/search_results#stq=testing&stp=1)
-
Yeah, but Ryan's answer is the best one if you can go that route.
-
Hi Michelle,
The concept of crawl efficiency is highly misunderstood. Are all your site's pages being indexed? Is new content or changes indexed in a timely manner? If so, that would indicate your site is being crawled efficiently.
Regarding the link you shared, you are on the right track but need to dig a bit deeper. On the page you shared, find the discussion related to robots.txt. There is a link which will lead you to the following page:
https://developers.google.com/webmasters/control-crawl-index/docs/faq#h01
There you will find a more detailed explanation along with several examples of when not to use robots.txt.
robots.txt: Use it if crawling of your content is causing issues on your server. For example, you may want to disallow crawling of infinite calendar scripts. You should not use the robots.txt to block private content (use server-side authentication instead), or handle canonicalization (see our Help Center). If you must be certain that a URL is not indexed, use the robots meta tag or X-Robots-Tag HTTP header instead.
SEOmoz offers a great guide on this topic as well: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/robotstxt
If you desire to go beyond the basic Google and SEOmoz explanation and learn more about this topic, my favorite article related to robots.txt, written by Lindsay, can be found here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/serious-robotstxt-misuse-high-impact-solutions
-
-
Hi Ryan,
Wouldn't that cause issues with crawl efficiency?
Also, webmaster guidelines say "Use robots.txt to prevent crawling of search results pages or other auto-generated pages that don't add much value for users coming from search engines."
-
Thank you. Are you sure about that?
-
what about if you use "<a title="Click for Help!">Canonical URL" tag ?</a>
You can put this code:
in
/searchhere?page.
-
The best practice would be to add the noindex tag to the search result pages but not the /searchhere page.
Typically speaking, the best robots.txt file is a blank one. The file should only be used as a last resort with respect to blocking content.
-
What you outlined sounds to me like it should work. Disallowing /searchhere? shouldn't disallow the top-level search page at /searchhere, but should disallow all the search result pages with queries after the ?.
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
-
URL structure - Page Path vs No Page Path
We are currently re building our URL structure for eccomerce websites. We have seen a lot of site removing the page path on product pages e.g. https://www.theiconic.co.nz/liberty-beach-blossom-shirt-680193.html versus what would normally be https://www.theiconic.co.nz/womens-clothing-tops/liberty-beach-blossom-shirt-680193.html Should we be removing the site page path for a product page to keep the url shorter or should we keep it? I can see that we would loose the hierarchy juice to a product page but not sure what is the right thing to do.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ashcastle0 -
Robots.txt - blocking JavaScript and CSS, best practice for Magento
Hi Mozzers, I'm looking for some feedback regarding best practices for setting up Robots.txt file in Magento. I'm concerned we are blocking bots from crawling essential information for page rank. My main concern comes with blocking JavaScript and CSS, are you supposed to block JavaScript and CSS or not? You can view our robots.txt file here Thanks, Blake
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LeapOfBelief0 -
Pages getting into Google Index, blocked by Robots.txt??
Hi all, So yesterday we set up to Remove URL's that got into the Google index that were not supposed to be there, due to faceted navigation... We searched for the URL's by using this in Google Search.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs2010
site:www.sekretza.com inurl:price=
site:www.sekretza.com inurl:artists= So it brings up a list of "duplicate" pages, and they have the usual: "A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt – learn more." So we removed them all, and google removed them all, every single one. This morning I do a check, and I find that more are creeping in - If i take one of the suspecting dupes to the Robots.txt tester, Google tells me it's Blocked. - and yet it's appearing in their index?? I'm confused as to why a path that is blocked is able to get into the index?? I'm thinking of lifting the Robots block so that Google can see that these pages also have a Meta NOINDEX,FOLLOW tag on - but surely that will waste my crawl budget on unnecessary pages? Any ideas? thanks.0 -
Best Practice for setting up expert author contributing to Multiple Sites?
If a single author contributes to multiple sites, should each site have its own author page (tying to the same single gg+ account)? Ex. One author > one gg+ account > multiple author pages (one per site) Or, should all sites publishing his content link to a single author page/bio on a single, main site? Ex. One author > one gg+ account > a single author page on one site (all other sites link to this author page) In this event, where would the 'contributor to' link point for the additional sites he is contributing to, the homepage? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seagreen0 -
Home Page or Internal Page
I have a website that deals with personalized jewelry, and our main keyword is "Name Necklace".
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tiedemann_Anselm
3 mounth ago i added new page: http://www.onecklace.com/name-necklaces/ And from then google index only this page for my main keyword, and not our home page.
Beacuase the page is new, and we didn't have a lot of link to it, our rank is not so well. I'm considering to remove this page (301 to home page), beacause i think that if google index our home page for this keyword it will be better. I'm not sure if this is a good idea, but i know that our home page have a lot of good links and maybe our rank will be higher. Another thing, because google index this internal page for this keyword, it looks like our home page have no main keyword at all. BTW, before i add this page, google index our main page with this keyword. Please advise... U5S8gyS.png j50XHl4.png0 -
Redirecting non-www pages to www ones
Hello:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | romanbond
I'm trying to consolidate all the link juice and see that some of my pages are linked to by using both www.mysite.com/whatever.html and mysite.com/whatever.html.
Is there a safe re-write rule that not just redirects non-www(s) to www(s), but designates the redirect as 301, so link juice will be transfered as well. If not RewriteRule, are there any other ways to accoplishe this? And the last question: can this be solved by simply setting Preffered domain in google webmaster tools to display www URL? Any help will be appreciated.0 -
What is the best practice to optimize page content with strong tags?
For example, if I have a sub page dedicated to the keyword "Houston Leather Furniture" is it best practice to bold ONLY the exact match keyword? Or should ONLY the words from the keyword (so 'Houston' 'Leather' and 'Furniture') Is there a rule to how many times it should be done before its over-optimization? I appreciate any information as I want to do the BEST possible practice when it comes to this topic. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MonsterWeb280 -
Robots.txt file - How to block thosands of pages when you don't have a folder path
Hello.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Unity
Just wondering if anyone has come across this and can tell me if it worked or not. Goal:
To block review pages Challenge:
The URLs aren't constructed using folders, they look like this:
www.website.com/default.aspx?z=review&PG1234
www.website.com/default.aspx?z=review&PG1235
www.website.com/default.aspx?z=review&PG1236 So the first part of the URL is the same (i.e. /default.aspx?z=review) and the unique part comes immediately after - so not as a folder. Looking at Google recommendations they show examples for ways to block 'folder directories' and 'individual pages' only. Question:
If I add the following to the Robots.txt file will it block all review pages? User-agent: *
Disallow: /default.aspx?z=review Much thanks,
Davinia0