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.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • 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 blocked internal resources Wordpress

    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 blocked internal resources Wordpress

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    2
    5
    3496
    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.
    • Mat_C
      Mat_C Subscriber last edited by

      Hi all,

      We've recently migrated a Wordpress website from staging to live, but the robots.txt was deleted.  I've created the following new one:

      User-agent: *
      Allow: /
      Disallow: /wp-admin/
      Disallow: /wp-includes/
      Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/
      Disallow: /wp-content/cache/
      Disallow: /wp-content/themes/
      Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php

      However, in the site audit on SemRush,  I now get the mention that a lot of pages have issues with blocked internal resources in robots.txt file. These blocked internal resources are all cached and minified css elements: links, images and scripts.

      Does this mean that Google won't crawl some parts of these pages with blocked resources correctly and thus won't be able to follow these links and index the images? In other words, is this any cause for concern regarding SEO?

      Of course I can change the robots.txt again, but will urls like https://example.com/wp-content/cache/minify/df983.js end up in the index?

      Thanks for your thoughts!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
      • Mat_C
        Mat_C Subscriber @JordanLowry last edited by

        Thanks for the answer!

        Last question: is /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php an important part that has to be crawled? I found this explanation: https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/190993/why-use-admin-ajax-php-and-how-does-it-work/191073#191073

        However, on this specific website there is no html at all when I check the source code, only one line with 0 on it.

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

          I would leave all the disallows out except for the /wp-admin/ section. For example, I'd rewrite the robots.txt file to read:

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

          Also, you kind of want Google to index your cached content. In the event your servers go down it will still be able to make your content available.

          I hope that helps. Let me know how that works out for you!

          Mat_C 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • Mat_C
            Mat_C Subscriber last edited by

            Thanks for the clear answer.

            I've changed the robots.txt to:

            User-agent: *
            Allow: /
            Disallow: /wp-admin/
            Disallow: /wp-includes/
            Disallow: /wp-content/themes/
            Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php

            This should avoid problems with not indexing (parts of) cached content.

            Or should I leave all the Disallows out?

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

              Hey there --

              Blocking resources with the robots.txt file prevents search engines from crawling content the no-index tag would be better suited for preventing content from being indexed.

              However, previous best practice would dictate blocking access to /wp-includes/ and /wp-content/ directories, etc but that's no longer necessary.

              Today, Google will fetch all your styling and JavaScript files so they can render your pages completely. Search engines now try to understand your page's layout and presentation as a key part of how they evaluate quality.

              So, yeah this might have some impact on your SEO.

              Also, if you're using a plugin to cache content you should want Google to crawl your cache content. And in my experience, Googlebot does a good job of not indexing /wp-content/ sections.

              So, for your example page, https://example.com/wp-content/cache/minify/df983.js it shouldn't end up in their index.

              Hope this helps some.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
              • 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

              • netcomsia

                block primary . xxx domain with disavow tool

                search results spam spam score disavow seo audit

                Hi friends I discovered spam url attack on top sites with good google positions for specific keyword. Can I block primary domain like .xxx with disavow tool? There is hundreds of different domains but primary domain is always the same. for example like this domain:xxx? Thanks

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | netcomsia
                0
              • moon-boots

                Remove Product & Category from URLS in Wordpress

                Does anyone have experience removing /product/ and /product-category/, etc. from URLs in wordpress? I found this link from Wordpress which explains that this shouldn't be done, but I would like some opinions of those who have tried it please. https://docs.woocommerce.com/document/removing-product-product-category-or-shop-from-the-urls/

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moon-boots
                0
              • seoanalytics

                Breadcrumbs and internal links

                Hello, I use to move up my site structure with links in content. I have now installed breadcrumbs, is it is useful to still keep the links in content or isn't there a need to duplicate those links ? and are the breadcrumbs links enough. Thank you,

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics
                1
              • Caro-O

                Using hreflang for international pages - is this how you do it?

                My client is trying to achieve a global presence in select countries, and then track traffic from their international pages in Google Analytics. The content for the international pages is pretty much the same as for USA pages, but the form and a few other details are different due to how product licensing has to be set up. I don’t want to risk losing ranking for existing USA pages due to issues like duplicate content etc. What is the best way to approach this? This is my first foray into this and I’ve been scanning the MOZ topics but a number of the conversations are going over my head,so suggestions will need to be pretty simple 🙂 Is it a case of adding hreflang code to each page and creating different URLs for tracking. For example:
                URL for USA: https://company.com/en-US/products/product-name/
                URL for Canada: https://company.com/en-ca/products/product-name /
                URL for German Language Content: https://company.com/de/products/product-name /
                URL for rest of the world: https://company.com/en/products/product-name /

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Caro-O
                1
              • jmorehouse

                Should I disallow all URL query strings/parameters in Robots.txt?

                Webmaster Tools correctly identifies the query strings/parameters used in my URLs, but still reports duplicate title tags and meta descriptions for the original URL and the versions with parameters. For example, Webmaster Tools would report duplicates for the following URLs, despite it correctly identifying the "cat_id" and "kw" parameters: /Mulligan-Practitioner-CD-ROM
                /Mulligan-Practitioner-CD-ROM?cat_id=87
                /Mulligan-Practitioner-CD-ROM?kw=CROM Additionally, theses pages have self-referential canonical tags, so I would think I'd be covered, but I recently read that another Mozzer saw a great improvement after disallowing all query/parameter URLs, despite Webmaster Tools not reporting any errors. As I see it, I have two options: Manually tell Google that these parameters have no effect on page content via the URL Parameters section in Webmaster Tools (in case Google is unable to automatically detect this, and I am being penalized as a result). Add "Disallow: *?" to hide all query/parameter URLs from Google. My concern here is that most backlinks include the parameters, and in some cases these parameter URLs outrank the original. Any thoughts?

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jmorehouse
                0
              • YairSpolter

                Block in robots.txt instead of using canonical?

                When I use a canonical tag for pages that are variations of the same page, it basically means that I don't want Google to index this page. But at the same time, spiders will go ahead and crawl the page. Isn't this a waste of my crawl budget? Wouldn't it be better to just disallow the page in robots.txt and let Google focus on crawling the pages that I do want indexed? In other words, why should I ever use rel=canonical as opposed to simply disallowing in robots.txt?

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | YairSpolter
                0
              • BryanPhelps-BigLeapWeb

                Blocking HTTP 1.0?

                One of my clients believes someone is trying to hack their site.  We are seeing the requests with a server protocol or HTTP 1.0 so they want to block 1.0 entirely. Will this cause any problems with search engines or regular, non-spamming visitors?

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BryanPhelps-BigLeapWeb
                0
              • AndrewY

                Blocking Dynamic URLs with Robots.txt

                Background: My e-commerce site uses a lot of layered navigation and sorting links.  While this is great for users, it ends up in a lot of URL variations of the same page being crawled by Google.  For example, a standard category page: www.mysite.com/widgets.html ...which uses a "Price" layered navigation sidebar to filter products based on price also produces the following URLs which link to the same page: http://www.mysite.com/widgets.html?price=1%2C250 http://www.mysite.com/widgets.html?price=2%2C250 http://www.mysite.com/widgets.html?price=3%2C250 As there are literally thousands of these URL variations being indexed, so I'd like to use Robots.txt to disallow these variations. Question: Is this a wise thing to do?  Or does Google take into account layered navigation links by default, and I don't need to worry. To implement, I was going to do the following in Robots.txt: User-agent: * Disallow: /*? Disallow: /*= ....which would prevent any dynamic URL with a '?" or '=' from being indexed.  Is there a better way to do this, or is this a good solution? Thank you!

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndrewY
                1

              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
              • Digital Marketers
              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.