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.
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?
-
The robots file will avoid google to show further information on the disallowed pages but it doesn't prevent indexation.
They're still indexed (that's why you're seeing them) but with no meta desc nor text taken from the page because google wasn't allowed to retrieve more information.
If you want them to start showing info, you'll jsut need to remove that rule from the robots.txt and soon you'll start seeing those pages information showing, but if you want them out of the index you can use GWT to remove them from the index after you've included in each page the noindex meta tag which is the only command which will prevent indexation.
-
I assumed the same thing, but I performed a site command search while they were prospects, and they had 1 result present with the explanation of "A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt – learn more"
They uploaded an xml sitemap before I could tell them to remove the robots.txt. and 1 week later, the entire site is now in the index.
I have used the robots.txt to properly block websites, it usually takes 2-3 for all results to drop out the index, so I don't know how that could explain it either.
-
I agree, the only way I could think this would work would be if the robotx.txt file was on the root domain. I agree, check Webmaster tools, they will tell you under the sitemaps section about "Error: URL was blocked by robots.txt).
One thing to remember is that robots.txt is technically a suggestion to ask search engines not to crawl your site. They can choose to ignore it, though personally I don't know of any cases in which this happenned.
-
An XML sitemap shouldn't override robots.txt. If you have Google Webmaster Tools setup, you will see warnings on the sitemaps page that pages being blocked by robots are being submitted.
Now, robots.txt does not prevent indexation, just crawling. So if the pages were indexed before they implemented robots.txt, they may continue to be indexed. Google will also display just the URL for pages that it's discovered, but can't crawl because of robots.txt.
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 -
Remove sitemap, effect ranking?
We are considering to remove our sitemap because it doesn't display the right structure. Will it affect current rankings if we remove the sitemap en continuing without a sitemap? Thanks
Technical SEO | | rijwielcashencarry0400 -
Is there a maximum sitemap size?
Hi all, Over the last month we've included all images, videos, etc. into our sitemap and now its loading time is rather high. (http://www.troteclaser.com/sitemap.xml) Is there any maximum sitemap size that is recommended from Google?
Technical SEO | | Troteclaser0 -
Should all pagination pages be included in sitemaps
How important is it for a sitemap to include all individual urls for the paginated content. Assuming the rel next and prev tags are set up would it be ok to just have the page 1 in the sitemap ?
Technical SEO | | Saijo.George0 -
Is there a way for me to automatically download a website's sitemap.xml every month?
From now on we want to store all our sitemap.xml over the next years. Its a nice archive to have that allows us to analyse how many pages we have on our website and which ones were removed/redirected. Any suggestions? Thanks
Technical SEO | | DeptAgency0 -
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 -
Should each new blog post be added to Sitemap.xml
Hello everyone, I have a website that has only static content. I have recently added a Blog to my website and I am wondering if I need to add each new Blog post to my Sitemap.xml file? Or is there another way/better way to get the Blog posting index? Any advice is greatly appreciated!
Technical SEO | | threebiz0 -
Should XML sitemaps include *all* pages or just the deeper ones?
Hi guys, Ok this is a bit of a sitemap 101 question but I cant find a definitive answer: When we're running out XML sitemaps for google to chew on (we're talking ecommerce and directory sites with many pages inside sub-categories here) is there any point in mentioning the homepage or even the second level pages? We know google is crawling and indexing those and we're thinking we should trim the fat and just send a map of the bottom level pages. What do you think?
Technical SEO | | timwills0