Robots Disallow Backslash - Is it right command
-
Bit skeptical, as due to dynamic url and some other linkage issue, google has crawled url with backslash and asterisk character
ex - www.xyz.com/\/index.php?option=com_product
www.xyz.com/\"/index.php?option=com_product
Now %5c is the encoded version of \ - backslash & %22 is encoded version of asterisk
Need to know for command :-
User-agent: * Disallow: \As am disallowing all backslash url through this - will it only remove the backslash url which are duplicates or the entire site,
-
Thanks, you seem lucky to me.. Almost after 2 month i have got the code for making all these encoded url's redirect correctly. Finally, now if one types
http://www.mycarhelpline.com/\"/index.php?option=com_latestnews&view=list&Itemid=10
then he's redirected through 301 to the correct url
http://www.mycarhelpline.com/index.php?option=com_latestnews&view=list&Itemid=10
-
Hello Gagan,
I think the best way to handle this would be using the rel canonical tag or rewriting the URLs to get rid of the parameters and replace them with something more user-friendly.
The rel canonical tag would be the easiest way out of those two. I notice the version without the encoding (e.g. http://www.mycarhelpline.com/index.php?option=com_latestnews&view=list&Itemid=10 ) have a rel canonical tag that correctly references itself as the canonical version. However, the encoded URLs (e.g. http://www.mycarhelpline.com/\"/index.php?option=com_latestnews&view=list&Itemid=10) which is actually http://www.mycarhelpline.com/\"/index.php?option=com_latestnews&view=list&Itemid=10 does NOT have a rel canonical tag.
If the version with the backslash had a rel canonical tag stating that the following URL is canonical it would solve your issue, I think.
Canonical URL:
http://www.mycarhelpline.com/index.php?option=com_latestnews&view=list&Itemid=10 -
Sure, If i show you some url they are crawled as :-
Sample Incorrect URLs crawled and reported as duplicate one in Google Webmaster & Moz too
|
http://www.mycarhelpline.com/\"/index.php?option=com_latestnews&view=list&Itemid=10
| http://www.mycarhelpline.com/\"/index.php?option=com_newcar&view=category&Itemid=2 |
|
Correct URL
http://www.mycarhelpline.com/index.php?option=com_latestnews&view=list&Itemid=10
http://www.mycarhelpline.com/index.php?option=com_newcar&view=search&Itemid=2
What we found online
Since URLs often contain characters outside the ASCII set, the URL has to be converted into a valid ASCII format. URL encoding replaces unsafe ASCII characters with a "%" followed by two hexadecimal digits. URLs cannot contain spaces.
%22 reflects - " and %5c as \ (forward slash)
We intend to remove these duplicate one created having %22 and %5c within them..
Many thanks
-
I am not entirely sure I understood your question as intended, but I will do my best to answer.
I would not put this in my robots.txt flie because it could possibly be misunderstood as a forward slash, in which case your entire domain would be blocked:
Disallow: \
We can possibly provide you with some alternative suggestions on how to keep Google from crawling those pages if you could share some real examples.
It may be best to rewrite/redirect those URls instead since they don't seem to be the canonical version you intend to be presented to the user.
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
-
Block session id URLs with robots.txt
Hi, I would like to block all URLs with the parameter '?filter=' from being crawled by including them in the robots.txt. Which directive should I use: User-agent: *
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mat_C
Disallow: ?filter= or User-agent: *
Disallow: /?filter= In other words, is the forward slash in the beginning of the disallow directive necessary? Thanks!1 -
Google: How to See URLs Blocked by Robots?
Google Webmaster Tools says we have 17K out of 34K URLs that are blocked by our Robots.txt file. How can I see the URLs that are being blocked? Here's our Robots.txt file. User-agent: * Disallow: /swish.cgi Disallow: /demo Disallow: /reviews/review.php/new/ Disallow: /cgi-audiobooksonline/sb/order.cgi Disallow: /cgi-audiobooksonline/sb/productsearch.cgi Disallow: /cgi-audiobooksonline/sb/billing.cgi Disallow: /cgi-audiobooksonline/sb/inv.cgi Disallow: /cgi-audiobooksonline/sb/new_options.cgi Disallow: /cgi-audiobooksonline/sb/registration.cgi Disallow: /cgi-audiobooksonline/sb/tellfriend.cgi Disallow: /*?gdftrk Sitemap: http://www.audiobooksonline.com/google-sitemap.xml
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lbohen0 -
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 -
Could you use a robots.txt file to disalow a duplicate content page from being crawled?
A website has duplicate content pages to make it easier for users to find the information from a couple spots in the site navigation. Site owner would like to keep it this way without hurting SEO. I've thought of using the robots.txt file to disallow search engines from crawling one of the pages. Would you think this is a workable/acceptable solution?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gregelwell0 -
Move to a new domain - How to get the redirects right?
Hi, I hope that someone with good htaccess knowledge can help. I am planning on moving my site to a new domain. I understand that I should make 301 redirects using htaccess for every URL. This is a big site so it will be impossible to not forget some of the thousands existing URLs. Now to the question: How do I make all the URLs that is not specified in htaccess to redirect to my new root? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mrlolalot0 -
XML Sitemap instruction in robots.txt = Worth doing?
Hi fellow SEO's, Just a quick one, I was reading a few guides on Bing Webmaster tools and found that you can use the robots.txt file to point crawlers/bots to your XML sitemap (they don't look for it by default). I was just wondering if it would be worth creating a robots.txt file purely for the purpose of pointing bots to the XML sitemap? I've submitted it manually to Google and Bing webmaster tools but I was thinking more for the other bots (I.e. Mozbot, the SEOmoz bot?). Any thoughts would be appreciated! 🙂 Regards, Ash
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AshSEO20110 -
Block an entire subdomain with robots.txt?
Is it possible to block an entire subdomain with robots.txt? I write for a blog that has their root domain as well as a subdomain pointing to the exact same IP. Getting rid of the option is not an option so I'd like to explore other options to avoid duplicate content. Any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kylesuss12 -
Category Pages - Canonical, Robots.txt, Changing Page Attributes
A site has category pages as such: www.domain.com/category.html, www.domain.com/category-page2.html, etc... This is producing duplicate meta descriptions (page titles have page numbers in them so they are not duplicate). Below are the options that we've been thinking about: a. Keep meta descriptions the same except for adding a page number (this would keep internal juice flowing to products that are listed on subsequent pages). All pages have unique product listings. b. Use canonical tags on subsequent pages and point them back to the main category page. c. Robots.txt on subsequent pages. d. ? Options b and c will orphan or french fry some of our product pages. Any help on this would be much appreciated. Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Troyville0