Robot.txt help
-
Hi,
We have a blog that is killing our SEO.
We need to
Disallow
Disallow: /Blog/?tag*
Disallow: /Blog/?page*
Disallow: /Blog/category/*
Disallow: /Blog/author/*
Disallow: /Blog/archive/*
Disallow: /Blog/Account/.
Disallow: /Blog/search*
Disallow: /Blog/search.aspx
Disallow: /Blog/error404.aspx
Disallow: /Blog/archive*
Disallow: /Blog/archive.aspx
Disallow: /Blog/sitemap.axd
Disallow: /Blog/post.aspxBut Allow everything below /Blog/Post
The disallow list seems to keep growing as we find issues. So rather than adding in to our Robot.txt all the areas to disallow. Is there a way to easily just say Allow /Blog/Post and ignore the rest. How do we do that in Robot.txt
Thanks
-
These: http://screencast.com/t/p120RbUhCT
They appear on every page I looked at, and take up the entire area "above the fold" and the content is "below the fold"
-Dan
-
Thanks Dan, but what grey areas, what url are you looking at?
-
Ahh. I see. You just need to "noindex" the pages you don't want in the index. As far as how to do that with blogengine, I am not sure, as I have never used it before.
But I think a bigger issue is like the giant box areas at the top of every page. They are pushing your content way down. That's definitely hurting UX and making the site a little confusing. I'd suggest improving that as well
-Dan
-
Hi Dan, Yes sorry that's the one!
-
Hi There... that address does not seem to work for me. Should it be .net? http://www.dotnetblogengine.net/
-Dan
-
Hi
The blog is www.dotnetblogengine.com
The content is only on the blog once it is just it can be accessed lots of different ways
-
Andrew
I doubt that one thing made your rankings drop so much. Also, what type of CMS are you on? Duplicate content like that should be controlled through indexation for the most part, but I am not recognizing that type of URL structure as any particular CMS?
Are just the title tags duplicate or the entire page content? Essentially, I would either change the content of the pages so they are not duplicate, or if that doesn't make sense I would just "noindex" them.
-Dan
-
Hi Dan,
I am getting duplicate content errors in WMT like
This is because tag=ABC and page=1 are both different ways to get to www.mysite.com/Blog/Post/My-Blog-Post.aspx
To fix this I have remove the URL's www.mysite.com/Blog/?tag=ABC and www.mysite.com/Blog/?Page=1from GWMT and by setting robot.txt up like
User-agent: *
Disallow: /Blog/
Allow: /Blog/post
Allow: /Blog/PostI hope to solve the duplicate content issue to stop it happening again.
Since doing this my SERP's have dropped massively. Is what I have done wrong or bad? How would I fix?
Hope this makes sense thanks for you help on this its appreciated.
Andrew
-
Hi There
Where are they appearing in WMT? In crawl errors?
You can also control crawling of parameters within webmaster tools - but I am still not quite sure if you are trying to remove these from the index or just prevent crawling (and if preventing crawling, for what reason?) or both?
-Dan
-
Hi Dan,
The issue is my blog had tagging switched on, it cause canonicalization mayhem.
I switched it off, but the tags still appears in Google Webmaster Tools (GWMT). I Remove URL via GWMT but they are still appearing. This has also caused me to plummet down the SERPs! I am hoping this is why my SERPs had dropped anyway! I am now trying to get to a point where google just sees my blog posts and not the ?Tag or ?Author or any other parameter that is going to cause me canoncilization pain. In the meantime I am sat waiting for google to bring me back up the SERPs when things settle down but it has been 2 weeks now so maybe something else is up?
-
I'm wondering why you want to block crawling of these URLs - I think what you're going for is to not index them, yes? If you block them from being crawled, they'll remain in the index. I would suggest considering robots meta noindex tags - unless you can describe in a little more detail what the issue is?
-Dan
-
Ok then you should be all set if your tests on GWMT did not indicate any errors.
-
Thanks it goes straight to www.mysite.com/Blog
-
Yup, I understand that you want to see your main site. This is why I recommended blocking only /Blog and not / (your root domain).
However, many blogs have a landing page. Does yours? In other words, when you click on your blog link, does it take you straight to Blog/posts or is there another page in between, eg /Blog/welcome?
If it does not go straight into Blog/posts you would want to also allow the landing page.
Does that make sense?
-
The structure is:
www.mysite.com - want to see everything at this level and below it
www.mysite.com/Blog - want to BLOCK everything at this level
www.mysite.com/Blog/posts - want to see everything at this level and below it
-
Well what Martijn (sorry, I spelled his name wrong before) and I were saying was not to forget to allow the landing page of your blog - otherwise this will not be indexed as you are disallowing the main blog directory.
Do you have a specific landing page for your blog or does it go straight into the /posts directory?
I'd say there's nothing wrong with allowing both Blog/Post and Blog/post just to be on the safe side...honestly not sure about case sensitivity in this instance.
-
"We're getting closer David, but after reading the question again I think we both miss an essential point ;-)" What was the essential point you missed. sorry I don't understand. I don;t want to make a mistake in my Robot.txt so would like to be 100% sure on what you are saying
-
Thanks guys so I have
User-agent: *
Disallow: /Blog/
Allow: /Blog/post
Allow: /Blog/Postthat works. My Home page also works. I there anything wrong with including both uppercase "Post" and lowercase "post". It is lowercase on the site but want uppercase "P" just incase. Is there a way to make the entry non case sensitive?
Thanks
-
Correct, Martijin. Good catch!
-
There was a reason that I said he should test this!
We're getting closer David, but after reading the question again I think we both miss an essential point ;-). As we know also exclude the robots from crawling the 'homepage' of the blog. If you have this homepage don't forget to also Allow it.
-
Well, no point in a blog that hurts your seo
I respectfully disagree with Martijin; I believe what you would want to do is disallow the Blog directory itself, not the whole site. It would seem if you Disallow: / and _Allow:/Blog/Post _ that you are telling SEs not to index anything on your site except for /Blog/Post.
I'd recommend:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /Blog/
Allow: /Blog/PostThis should block off the entire Blog directory except for your post subdirectory. As Maritijin stated; always test before you make real changes to your robots.txt.
-
That would be something like this, please check this or test this within Google Webmaster Tools if it works because I don't want to screw up your whole site. What this does is disallowing your complete site and just allows the /Blog/Post urls.
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
Allow: /Blog/Post
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 wildcards - the devs had a disagreement - which is correct?
Hi – the lead website developer was assuming that this wildcard: Disallow: /shirts/?* would block URLs including a ? within this directory, and all the subdirectories of this directory that included a “?” The second developer suggested that this wildcard would only block URLs featuring a ? that come immediately after /shirts/ - for example: /shirts?minprice=10&maxprice=20 BUT argued that this robots.txt directive would not block URLS featuring a ? in sub directories - e.g. /shirts/blue?mprice=100&maxp=20 So which of the developers is correct? Beyond that, I assumed that the ? should feature a * on each side of it – for example - /? - to work as intended above? Am I correct in assuming that?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Robots.txt and redirected backlinks
Hey there, since a client's global website has a very complex structure which lead to big duplicate content problems, we decided to disallow crawler access and instead allow access to only a few relevant subdirectories. While indexing has improved since this I was wondering if we might have cut off link juice. Since several backlinks point to the disallowed root directory and are from there redirected (301) to the allowed directory I was wondering if this could cause any problems? Example: If there is a backlink pointing to example.com (disallowed in robots.txt) and is redirected from there to example.com/uk/en (allowed in robots.txt). Would this cut off the link juice? Thanks a lot for your thoughts on this. Regards, Jochen
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Online-Marketing-Guy0 -
Help with https// redirects
Hey there
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jay328
I have a client who just moved from a self hosted CMS to Adobe Catalyst (don't ask!)
The problem: Their url indexed with google is https://domain.com, Adobe Catalyst does not support third party SSL certificates or https domains. Now when people google them https://domain.com shows up in search, HOWEVER it does not have a trusted certificate and a pop up window blocks the site. They are a mortgage company so SSL is really not needed. What can I do to get google to recognize the site at http: vs. https? Would this be something in GWMT? Thanks!0 -
Doing SEO for a Classifieds Website and need help
Hey All! I'm going to be doing SEO for a classifieds website (cars only). But I'm struggling to dream up an effective strategy. They have a reasonably popular blog that I could definitely use to publish content for link bait, and some opportunities for guest blogging. But in terms of straight up link building (think craigslist), I'm really at a loss as to where to start. If anyone has any experience working with Classifieds websites or can recommend any strategies that you think will work I'm all ears! Really appreciate any help that anyone has to offer! Cheers 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CD_20160 -
Certain Pages Not Being Indexed - Please Help
We are having trouble getting a bulk of our pages indexed in google. Any help would be greatly appreciated! The Following Page types are being indexed through escaped fragment: http://www.cbuy.tv/#! http://www.cbuy.tv/celebrity#!65-Ashley-Tisdale/fashion/4097-Casadei-BLADE-PUMP/Product/175199 <cite>www.cbuy.tv/celebrity/155-Sophia-Bush#!</cite> However, all our pages that look like this, are not being indexed: http://www.cbuy.tv/#!Type=Photo&id=b1d18759-5e52-4a1c-9491-6fb3cb9d4b95&Katie-Holmes-Hot-Pink-Pants-Isabel-Marant-DAVID-DOUBLE-BREASTED-Wool-COAT-Maison-Pumps-Black-Bag
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CBuy0 -
Need help in Title tags
Hi I have word press site and it has 24 pages and the main keywords is Stairlifts there are various kind and type of stairlifts and all the 24 page has the title tag stairslifts , i have tried to make each unique but i cannot avoid using the keyword stairslift. Will that have a negative impact if my main keyword is stairlifts. My target page for stairlifts is the home page. Any suggestions please Many thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | conversiontactics0 -
Robots.txt: Can you put a /* wildcard in the middle of a URL?
We have noticed that Google is indexing the language/country directory versions of directories we have disallowed in our robots.txt. For example: Disallow: /images/ is blocked just fine However, once you add our /en/uk/ directory in front of it, there are dozens of pages indexed. The question is: Can I put a wildcard in the middle of the string, ex. /en/*/images/, or do I need to list out every single country for every language in the robots file. Anyone know of any workarounds?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IHSwebsite0 -
Disallow my store in robots.txt?
Should I disallow my store directory in robots.txt? Here is the URL: https://www.stdtime.com/store/ Here are my reasons for suggesting this: SEOMOZ finds crawl "errors" in there that I don't care about I don't think I care if the search engines index those pages I only have one product, and it is not an impulse buy My product has a 60 day sales cycle, so price is less important than features
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | raywhite0