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 blocking Moz
-
Moz are reporting the robots.txt file is blocking them from crawling one of our websites.
But as far as we can see this file is exactly the same as the robots.txt files on other websites that Moz is crawling without problems.
We have never come up against this before, even with this site.
Our stats show Rogerbot attempting to crawl our site, but it receives a 404 error.
Can anyone enlighten us to the problem please?
http://www.wychwoodflooring.com
-Christina
-
Hi Nigel
Neither, they use server side filtering.Regards- David
-
Hi David
That's great news!
As a matter of interest, where did they block it? as it's not in the Robots.txt - was in in htaccess.txt?
Regards
Nigel
-
Nigel,Thanks for the reply, the cgi-bin folder is never used by any of my sites but I put this in just as a matter of course, the folder would normally contain old cgi scripts so would not usually affect the crawling of a robot in any case.The reason for the problem turns out that our host had blocked rogerbot along with several other malicious bots, they have now lifted this block and the site is able to be crawled.- David
-
Hi Christina
I don't know how your site is set up but I can see that for some reason you are blocking access to the cgi-bin
If that directory contains files that execute php or other permissions then that may well be your problem. It's the only directory you are blocking and since I haven't seen other Robots.tx blocking it, then I would hazard a guess that this is the root of your problem.
Robots.txt
User-agent: * Disallow: /cgi-bin/ Sitemap: http://www.wychwoodflooring.com/sitemap.xmlRegards
Nigel
-
Our hosting provider has banned Rogerbot as they see it as problematic!!!!
They are a great hosting provider so this is going to be a difficult one.
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
-
Unsolved Rogerbot blocked by cloudflare and not display full user agent string.
Hi, We're trying to get MOZ to crawl our site, but when we Create Your Campaign we get the error:
Moz Pro | | BB_NPG
Ooops. Our crawlers are unable to access that URL - please check to make sure it is correct. If the issue persists, check out this article for further help. robot.txt is fine and we actually see cloudflare is blocking it with block fight mode. We've added in some rules to allow rogerbot but these seem to be getting ignored. If we use a robot.txt test tool (https://technicalseo.com/tools/robots-txt/) with rogerbot as the user agent this get through fine and we can see our rule has allowed it. When viewing the cloudflare activity log (attached) it seems the Create Your Campaign is trying to crawl the site with the user agent as simply set as rogerbot 1.2 but the robot.txt testing tool uses the full user agent string rogerbot/1.0 (http://moz.com/help/pro/what-is-rogerbot-, rogerbot-crawler+shiny@moz.com) albeit it's version 1.0. So seems as if cloudflare doesn't like the simple user agent. So is it correct the when MOZ is trying to crawl the site it uses the simple string of just rogerbot 1.2 now ? Thanks
Ben Cloudflare activity log, showing differences in user agent strings
2022-07-01_13-05-59.png0 -
How long does Moz takes to update DA and PA value?
I used to work daily on my office website https://quintdaily.com/ and follow link building strategy. however, since more than 40-50 days, there is no movement in my DA, as the PA has just lifted up. However, there is no changes in Domain Authority so far. Besides, other than this website, im working on location wise SEO projects, but, i can find those websites Domain Authority changed in less 20 days. Is there is time period in changing the Domain Authority once it touched DA 30+?
Moz Pro | | seochris172 -
Ahrefs vs Moz
Hi! I noticed the Moz DA en the Ahrefs DA are very different. Where https://www.123opzeggen.nl/ has a DA of 10 at MOZ, the DA at Ahrefs is 26. Where does this big difference come from? Do you measure in different ways? I hope you can answer this question for me. Thank you in advance!
Moz Pro | | NaomiAdivare2 -
Block Moz (or any other robot) from crawling pages with specific URLs
Hello! Moz reports that my site has around 380 duplicate page content. Most of them come from dynamic generated URLs that have some specific parameters. I have sorted this out for Google in webmaster tools (the new Google Search Console) by blocking the pages with these parameters. However, Moz is still reporting the same amount of duplicate content pages and, to stop it, I know I must use robots.txt. The trick is that, I don't want to block every page, but just the pages with specific parameters. I want to do this because among these 380 pages there are some other pages with no parameters (or different parameters) that I need to take care of. Basically, I need to clean this list to be able to use the feature properly in the future. I have read through Moz forums and found a few topics related to this, but there is no clear answer on how to block only pages with specific URLs. Therefore, I have done my research and come up with these lines for robots.txt: User-agent: dotbot
Moz Pro | | Blacktie
Disallow: /*numberOfStars=0 User-agent: rogerbot
Disallow: /*numberOfStars=0 My questions: 1. Are the above lines correct and would block Moz (dotbot and rogerbot) from crawling only pages that have numberOfStars=0 parameter in their URLs, leaving other pages intact? 2. Do I need to have an empty line between the two groups? (I mean between "Disallow: /*numberOfStars=0" and "User-agent: rogerbot")? (or does it even matter?) I think this would help many people as there is no clear answer on how to block crawling only pages with specific URLs. Moreover, this should be valid for any robot out there. Thank you for your help!0 -
Meta Tag Descriptions not being found in Moz Crawls
Hey guys, I have been managing a few websites and have input them into Moz for crawl reports, etc. For a while I have noticed that we were getting a gratuitous amount of errors when it came to the number of missing meta tags. It was numbering in the 200's. The sites were in place before I got here and a lot of the older posts no one had even attempted to include tags, links of the page or anything. As they are all Wordpress Sites and they all already had the Yoast/Wordpress SEO plug-in installed on them, I decided I would go through each post and media file one at a time and update their meta tags via the plug in. I personally did this so I know that I added and saved each one, however the Moz crawl reports continue to show that we are missing roughly 200 meta tags. I've seen a huge drop off in 404 errors and stuff since I went through and double checked everything on the sites, however the meta tag errors persist. Is this the case that Moz is not recognizing the tags when it crawls because I used the Yoast Plugin? Or would you say that the plugin is the issue and I should find another way to add meta tags to the pages and posts on the site? My main concern is that if Moz is having issues crawling the sites, is Google also seeing the same thing? The URLS include:
Moz Pro | | MOZ.info
sundancevacationsblog.com
sundancevacationsnews.com
sundancevacationscharities.com Any help would be appreciated!0 -
Why is MOZ and Google search Volume so different?
A search term in MOZ shows the monthly search volume to be 49K. In Google, the same term shows the search volume at only 1300 monthly searches. Which do I trust? Thanks, Don
Moz Pro | | rcman0 -
Moz Pro vs. Moz Analytics
Beta version has been out for awhile. Curious to know what people think of Moz Analytics. Personally, I'm having a hard time making the switch from Pro to Moz Analytics because I'm so used to the navigation and layout of Pro. What does everyone else think of the new Moz Analytics? Advantages? Disadvantages?
Moz Pro | | EEE31 -
Moz is officially demigod-approved!
So, I was reading Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Battle of the Labyrinth tonight, and found a description of a graffiti tag in the Labyrinth that says "MOZ RULZ". What do you think? Is one of the Mozzers a demigod who has explored and survived the Labyrinth? 🙂 (See attachment for book quote.) F1WmT5r
Moz Pro | | AdamThompson4