Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Robots.txt: how to exclude sub-directories correctly?

    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.

    Robots.txt: how to exclude sub-directories correctly?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    3
    10
    53113
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • fablau
      fablau last edited by

      Hello here,

      I am trying to figure out the correct way to tell SEs to crawls this:

      http://www.mysite.com/directory/

      But not this:

      http://www.mysite.com/directory/sub-directory/

      or this:

      http://www.mysite.com/directory/sub-directory2/sub-directory/...

      But with the fact I have thousands of sub-directories with almost infinite combinations, I can't put the following definitions in a manageable way:

      disallow: /directory/sub-directory/

      disallow: /directory/sub-directory2/

      disallow: /directory/sub-directory/sub-directory/

      disallow: /directory/sub-directory2/subdirectory/

      etc...

      I would end up having thousands of definitions to disallow all the possible sub-directory combinations.

      So, is the following way a correct, better and shorter way to define what I want above:

      allow: /directory/$

      disallow: /directory/*

      Would the above work?

      Any thoughts are very welcome! Thank you in advance.

      Best,

      Fab.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • MickEdwards
        MickEdwards @sjunaidali last edited by

        I mentioned both.  You add a meta robots to noindex and remove from the sitemap.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • sjunaidali
          sjunaidali @MickEdwards last edited by

          But google is still free to index a link/page even if it is not included in xml sitemap.

          MickEdwards 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • MickEdwards
            MickEdwards @sjunaidali last edited by

            Install Yoast Wordpress SEO plugin and use that to restrict what is indexed and what is allowed in a sitemap.

            sjunaidali 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • sjunaidali
              sjunaidali @MickEdwards last edited by

              I am using wordpress, Enfold theme (themeforest).

              I want some files to be accessed by google, but those should not be indexed.

              Here is an example: http://prntscr.com/h8918o

              I have currently blocked some JS directories/files using robots.txt (check screenshot)

              But due to this I am not able to pass Mobile Friendly Test on Google: http://prntscr.com/h8925z (check screenshot)

              Is its possible to allow access, but use a tag like noindex in the robots.txt file. Or is there any other way out.

              MickEdwards 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • fablau
                fablau last edited by

                Yes, everything looks good, Webmaster Tools gave me the expected results with the following directives:

                allow: /directory/$

                disallow: /directory/*

                Which allows this URL:

                http://www.mysite.com/directory/

                But doesn't allow the following one:

                http://www.mysite.com/directory/sub-directory2/...

                This page also gives an update similar to mine:

                https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/156449?hl=en

                I think I am good! Thanks 🙂

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                • fablau
                  fablau last edited by

                  Thank you Michael, it is my understanding then that my idea of doing this:

                  allow: /directory/$

                  disallow: /directory/*

                  Should work just fine. I will test it within Google Webmaster Tools, and let you know if any problems arise.

                  In the meantime if anyone else has more ideas about all this and can confirm me that would be great!

                  Thank you again.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • MickEdwards
                    MickEdwards @fablau last edited by

                    I've always stuck to Disallow and followed -

                    "This is currently a bit awkward, as there is no "Allow" field. The easy way is to put all files to be disallowed into a separate directory, say "stuff", and leave the one file in the level above this directory:"

                    http://www.robotstxt.org/robotstxt.html

                    From https://developers.google.com/webmasters/control-crawl-index/docs/robots_txt this seems contradictory

                    | /* | equivalent to / | equivalent to / | Equivalent to "/" -- the trailing wildcard is ignored. |

                    I think this post will be very useful  for you - http://moz.com/community/q/allow-or-disallow-first-in-robots-txt

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • fablau
                      fablau @MickEdwards last edited by

                      Thank you Michael,

                      Google and other SEs actually recognize the "allow:" command:

                      https://developers.google.com/webmasters/control-crawl-index/docs/robots_txt

                      The fact is: if I don't specify that, how can I be sure that the following single command:

                      disallow: /directory/*

                      Doesn't prevent SEs to spider the /directory/ index as I'd like to?

                      MickEdwards 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • MickEdwards
                        MickEdwards last edited by

                        As long as you dont have directories somewhere in /* that you want indexed then I think that will work.  There is no allow so you don't need the first line just

                        disallow: /directory/*

                        You can test out here- https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/156449?rd=1

                        fablau sjunaidali 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • 1 / 1
                        • First post
                          Last post

                        Got a burning SEO question?

                        Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                        Start my free trial


                        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.

                        • See all categories

                        Related Questions

                        • Opera-Care

                          Is there any significant benefit to creating online directory listings that only provide nofollow links to our domain?

                          Is there any significant benefit to creating online directory listings that only provide nofollow links to our domain? For context, whilst doing link gap analysis I've found our competitors are listed on local government directories such as getsurrey.co.uk and miltonkeynes.co.uk. Whilst these aren't seen as spam directories, it's still highly unlikely we'll receive much traffic through them. The links they provide to our domain have the nofollow tag. So I wonder whether there's any other benefit to investing the time in creating these listings? Would be interested to hear your thoughts Many thanks in advance

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Opera-Care
                          1
                        • binhlai

                          If my website do not have a robot.txt file, does it hurt my website ranking?

                          After a site audit, I find out that my website don't have a robot.txt. Does it hurt my website rankings? One more thing, when I type mywebsite.com/robot.txt, it automatically redirect to the homepage. Please help!

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | binhlai
                          0
                        • McTaggart

                          What does Disallow: /french-wines/?* actually do - robots.txt

                          Hello Mozzers - Just wondering what this robots.txt instruction means: Disallow: /french-wines/?* Does it stop Googlebot crawling and indexing URLs in that "French Wines" folder - specifically the URLs that include a question mark? Would it stop the crawling of deeper folders - e.g. /french-wines/rhone-region/ that include a question mark in their URL? I think this has been done to block URLs containing query strings. Thanks, Luke

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart
                          0
                        • geniusenergyltd

                          Citation/Business Directory Question...

                          A company I work for has two numbers... one for the std call centre and one for tracking SEO. Now, if local citation/business directory listings have the same address but different numbers, will this affect local/other SEO results? Any help is greatly appreciated! 🙂

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | geniusenergyltd
                          0
                        • Rubix

                          Do you add 404 page into robot file or just add no index tag?

                          Hi, got different opinion on this so i wanted to double check with your comment is. We've got /404.html page and I was wondering if you would add this page to robot text so it wouldn't be indexed or would you just add no index tag? What would be the best approach? Thanks!

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rubix
                          0
                        • bjs2010

                          Meta NoIndex tag and Robots Disallow

                          Hi all, I hope you can spend some time to answer my first of a few questions 🙂 We are running a Magento site - layered/faceted navigation nightmare has created thousands of duplicate URLS! Anyway, during my process to tackle the issue, I disallowed in Robots.txt anything in the querystring that was not a p (allowed this for pagination). After checking some pages in Google, I did a site:www.mydomain.com/specificpage.html and a few duplicates came up along with the original with
                          "There is no information about this page because it is blocked by robots.txt" So I had added in Meta Noindex, follow on all these duplicates also but I guess it wasnt being read because of Robots.txt. So coming to my question. Did robots.txt block access to these pages? If so, were these already in the index and after disallowing it with robots, Googlebot could not read Meta No index? Does Meta Noindex Follow on pages actually help Googlebot decide to remove these pages from index? I thought Robots would stop and prevent indexation? But I've read this:
                          "Noindex is a funny thing, it actually doesn’t mean “You can’t index this”, it means “You can’t show this in search results”. Robots.txt disallow means “You can’t index this” but it doesn’t mean “You can’t show it in the search results”. I'm a bit confused about how to use these in both preventing duplicate content in the first place and then helping to address dupe content once it's already in the index. Thanks! B

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs2010
                          0
                        • Bio-RadAbs

                          PDFs and images in Sub folder or subdomain?

                          What would you recommend as best practice? Our ecommerce site has a lot of PDFs supporting the product page. Currently they are kept in a sub domain and so are all images. Would it be better to keep them all in a subfolder? I've read about blogs being hosted on a subfolder to be better than subdomain but what about pdfs and images? thoughts?

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bio-RadAbs
                          0
                        • ENSO

                          Robots.txt is blocking Wordpress Pages from Googlebot?

                          I have a robots.txt file on my server, which I did not develop, it was done by the web designer at the company before me. Then there is a word press plugin that generates a robots.txt file. How Do I unblock all the wordpress pages from googlebot?

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ENSO
                          0

                        Get started with Moz Pro!

                        Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                        Start my free trial
                        Products
                        • Moz Pro
                        • Moz Local
                        • Moz API
                        • Moz Data
                        • STAT
                        • Product Updates
                        Moz Solutions
                        • SMB Solutions
                        • Agency Solutions
                        • Enterprise Solutions
                        Free SEO Tools
                        • Domain Authority Checker
                        • Link Explorer
                        • Keyword Explorer
                        • Competitive Research
                        • Brand Authority Checker
                        • Local Citation Checker
                        • MozBar Extension
                        • MozCast
                        Resources
                        • Blog
                        • SEO Learning Center
                        • Help Hub
                        • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                        • How-to Guides
                        • Moz Academy
                        • API Docs
                        About Moz
                        • About
                        • Team
                        • Careers
                        • Contact
                        Why Moz
                        • Case Studies
                        • Testimonials
                        Get Involved
                        • Become an Affiliate
                        • MozCon
                        • Webinars
                        • Practical Marketer Series
                        • MozPod
                        Connect with us

                        Contact the Help team

                        Join our newsletter
                        Moz logo
                        © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                        • Accessibility
                        • Terms of Use
                        • Privacy

                        Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.