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
      • SEO Q&A
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • Case Studies
      • 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.

      What is your Brand Authority?
      Moz

      What is your Brand Authority?

      Check yours now
    • 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.

      • SEO Q&A

        Insights & discussions from an SEO community of 500,000+.

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • 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.

      • Case Studies

        Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

      • 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. Technical SEO
    4. How to allow bots to crawl all but WP-content

    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.

    How to allow bots to crawl all but WP-content

    Technical SEO
    2
    13
    3369
    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.
    • Tom3_15
      Tom3_15 last edited by

      Hello,

      I would like my website to remain crawlable to bots, but to block my wp content and media. Does the following robots.txt work? I worry that the * user agent may conflict with the others.

      User-agent: *
      Disallow: /wp-admin/
      Disallow: /wp-includes/
      Disallow: /wp-content/

      User-agent: GoogleBot
      Allow: /

      User-agent: GoogleBot-Mobile
      Allow: /

      User-agent: GoogleBot-Image
      Allow: /

      User-agent: Bingbot
      Allow: /

      User-agent: Slurp
      Allow: /

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Tom3_15
        Tom3_15 @GastonRiera last edited by

        Thank you for the help, Gaston!

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • GastonRiera
          Gaston Riera @Tom3_15 last edited by

          Yeap, with that you are allowing every file ending with that extension

          Tom3_15 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Tom3_15
            Tom3_15 @Tom3_15 last edited by

            Can I do so with:

            Allow: *.jpg

            Allow: *.png

            GastonRiera 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • Tom3_15
              Tom3_15 @GastonRiera last edited by

              Thanks, Gaston. I should have been more clear about what I am looking to do. I currently am having an indexation issue. Somehow, pages are being automatically generated by WordPress.

              These pages are often .txt files of information or code from plugins, all beginning with /wp-content/uploads/ in their URL. I have been manually removing them from the index and would like to now have them be uncrawlable.

              Best

              Tom3_15 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • GastonRiera
                Gaston Riera @Tom3_15 last edited by

                Oh god, my mistake!
                Im deeply sorry, yes, this configuration will block images! that follow that folder structure!

                I'll correct myself.
                Thanks for pointing it out!

                Tom3_15 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • Tom3_15
                  Tom3_15 @GastonRiera last edited by

                  Gaston,

                  Thanks for the fast reply! My images folder does follow that format, which is what makes me worrisome as we are blocking the wp-conent folder.

                  Thanks!

                  GastonRiera 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • GastonRiera
                    Gaston Riera @Tom3_15 last edited by

                    Hi Tom,

                    Yes, this config will allow images to be crawled,

                    No, this config will block images to be crawled,as long as your wordpress has the defalt folder for images: /wp-content/uploads/year/month/image-name.png

                    How to know, super easy, where your images are stored? Go to the web where you can find an image... Then right clic and then copy link address. With that link you will find that folder structure.

                    Hope it helps.
                    Best luck.
                    GR

                    Tom3_15 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • Tom3_15
                      Tom3_15 @GastonRiera last edited by

                      Hi Gaston,

                      I just wanted to follow up with you with one last question if possible. Would this allow my images and PDF's to be crawled & indexed still?

                      Thanks!

                      GastonRiera 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • Tom3_15
                        Tom3_15 @GastonRiera last edited by

                        Awesome. Thanks, Gaston!

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • GastonRiera
                          Gaston Riera @Tom3_15 last edited by

                          Yes it does.

                          As I said earlier. Copy and paste that code into the robot.txt tester in any of your search console and try with some name.css or testing.js just for testing.
                          Check the image i've attached.

                          Hope it helps.
                          Best luck
                          GR

                          btsycPz

                          Tom3_15 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 3
                          • Tom3_15
                            Tom3_15 @GastonRiera last edited by

                            Thank you for the response. I'm still a little uncertain, does the version you wrote allow the bots to crawl the css and js as well?

                            Best

                            GastonRiera 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • GastonRiera
                              Gaston Riera last edited by

                              Hi Tom!

                              That Robots.txt config is pretty redundant.
                              To acheive what you what, thy this:

                              User-agent: * 
                              Disallow: /wp-admin/ 
                              Disallow: /wp-includes/
                              Disallow: /wp-content/
                              Allow: *.js
                              Allow: *.css

                              Just 3 things to note here:
                              1- That User-agent:* and those disallows blocks for every bot to crawl whats in those folders.
                              2- When blocking /wp-content/ you are also blocking the /themes/ folder and inside are the .js and .css files. Blocking those files cause to googlebot not being able to render correctly that page and see it different from what a normal user would see.
                              3- Those Allow:/ dont prevent the disallow.

                              To try that configuration, you can use the robots.txt tester in search console, just inder the Crawl menu.

                              Remember that by default google considers that you are not blocking nothing. 
                              More info here: The web robots.tat page

                              Hope it helps.
                              Best luck.
                              GR

                              Tom3_15 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 4
                              • 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

                              • Katarina-Borovska

                                Collapsible sections - content

                                **Hi,****I am looking to improve the aesthetics of some pages on my website by adding written content into collapsible tabs. I was wondering whether the content that is ‘hidden’ by tabs is given less weight by Google from the perspective of SEO? **Some articles I have read suggest that tabbed content is weighted equally with the content which is already immediately visible to the user, but others suggest that this may not be the case. **Please, can I request opinions on the matter? Any advice would be greatly appreciated, many thanks.**Katarina

                                Technical SEO | | Katarina-Borovska
                                0
                              • netzkern_AG

                                Duplicate content through product variants

                                Hi, Before you shout at me for not searching - I did and there are indeed lots of threads and articles on this problem. I therefore realise that this problem is not exactly new or unique. The situation: I am dealing with a website that has 1 to N (n being between 1 and 6 so far) variants of a product. There are no dropdown for variants. This is not technically possible short of a complete redesign which is not on the table right now. The product variants are also not linked to each other but share about 99% of content (obvious problem here). In the "search all" they show up individually. Each product-variant is a different page, unconnected in backend as well as frontend. The system is quite limited in what can be added and entered - I may have some opportunity to influence on smaller things such as enabling canonicals. In my opinion, the optimal choice would be to retain one page for each product, the base variant, and then add dropdowns to select extras/other variants. As that is not possible, I feel that the best solution is to canonicalise all versions to one version (either base variant or best-selling product?) and to offer customers a list at each product giving him a direct path to the other variants of the product. I'd be thankful for opinions, advice or showing completely new approaches I have not even thought of! Kind Regards, Nico

                                Technical SEO | | netzkern_AG
                                0
                              • manutx

                                SEO for User Authenticated Content

                                Hi Everyone - I have a potential client who is seeking SEO for a site that contains about 95% of content only accessible through user authentication . Does anyone have tips for getting this indexed without having to open it up to the public? I was considering adding "snippets" into the robots.txt or creating an additional page with snippets linking to the login page. I'd appreciate any thoughts! Thanks!

                                Technical SEO | | manutx
                                0
                              • cgman

                                Solving duplicate content with WP authors, tags, categories

                                I've been kind of neglecting wordpress installations on my websites and noticed many showing duplicate content for pages showing under author and tags, tags and single post, categories and single post. Should this be a concern? Whats the best way of fixing this? Thanks

                                Technical SEO | | cgman
                                0
                              • MirandaP

                                How to allow googlebot past paywall

                                Does anyone know of any ways or ideas to allow Google/Bing etc. to index your content, but have it behind a paywall for users?

                                Technical SEO | | MirandaP
                                0
                              • surveygizmo

                                Does Google pass link juice a page receives if the URL parameter specifies content and has the Crawl setting in Webmaster Tools set to NO?

                                The page in question receives a  lot of quality traffic but is only relevant to a small percent of my users. I want to keep the link juice received from this page but I do not want it to appear in the SERPs.

                                Technical SEO | | surveygizmo
                                0
                              • RiseSEO

                                Are recipes excluded from duplicate content?

                                Does anyone know how recipes are treated by search engines? For example, I know press releases are expected to have lots of duplicates out there so they aren't penalized. Does anyone know if recipes are treated the same way. For example, if you Google "three cheese beef pasta shells" you get the first two results with identical content.

                                Technical SEO | | RiseSEO
                                0
                              • evoNick

                                Crawling image folders / crawl allowance

                                We recently removed /img and /imgp from our robots.txt file thus allowing googlebot to crawl our image folders.  Not sure why we had these blocked in the first place, but we opened them up in response to an email from Google Product Search about not being able to crawl images - which can/has hurt our traffic from Google Shopping. My question is:  will allowing Google to crawl our image files eat up our 'crawl allowance'?  We wouldn't want Google to not crawl/index certain pages, and ding our organic traffic, because more of our allotted crawl bandwidth is getting chewed up crawling image files. Outside of the non-detailed crawl stat graphs from Webmaster Tools, what's the best way to check how frequently/ deeply our site is getting crawled? Thanks all!

                                Technical SEO | | evoNick
                                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
                              • 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.