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 & Disallow: /*? Question!

    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 & Disallow: /*? Question!

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    7
    6
    1705
    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.
    • vetofunk
      vetofunk last edited by

      Hi,

      I have a site where they have:

      Disallow: /*?

      Problem is we need the following indexed:

      ?utm_source=google_shopping

      What would the best solution be? I have read:

      User-agent: *
      Allow: ?utm_source=google_shopping
      Disallow: /*?

      Any ideas?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • BabaBha0173
        BabaBha0173 last edited by

        User-agent: * Disallow: /cgi-bin/ Disallow: /wp-admin/ Disallow: /archives/ Disallow: /? Allow: /comments/feed/ Disallow: /refer/ Disallow: /index.php Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/ Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php User-agent: Mediapartners-Google* Allow: / User-agent: Googlebot-Image Allow: /wp-content/uploads/ User-agent: Adsbot-Google Allow: / User-agent: Googlebot-Mobile Allow: / Sitemap: https://site.com/sitemap_index.xml

        use this it will help you and your problem will solve

        Regards

        Chotapao

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Hoslaa
          Hoslaa @SAjad687 last edited by

          User-agent: * Disallow: /cgi-bin/ Disallow: /wp-admin/ Disallow: /archives/ Disallow: /? Allow: /comments/feed/ Disallow: /refer/ Disallow: /index.php Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/ Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php User-agent: Mediapartners-Google* Allow: / User-agent: Googlebot-Image Allow: /wp-content/uploads/ User-agent: Adsbot-Google Allow: / User-agent: Googlebot-Mobile Allow: / Sitemap: https://site.com/sitemap_index.xml

          this will work ??
          Regards
          Sajad

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • SAjad687
            SAjad687 last edited by

            User-agent: *
            Disallow: /cgi-bin/
            Disallow: /wp-admin/
            Disallow: /archives/
            Disallow: /*?*
            Allow: /comments/feed/
            Disallow: /refer/
            Disallow: /index.php
            Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/
            Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php
            
            User-agent: Mediapartners-Google*
            Allow: /
            
            User-agent: Googlebot-Image
            Allow: /wp-content/uploads/
            
            User-agent: Adsbot-Google
            Allow: /
            
            User-agent: Googlebot-Mobile
            Allow: /
            
            Sitemap: https://site.com/sitemap_index.xml
            
            use this it will help you
            
            Regards
            [Saad](https://clicktestworld.com/)
            
            Hoslaa 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • NickSamuel
              NickSamuel last edited by

              Hi Jeff,

              Robots.txt tester as per the above link is definitely worth playing with and is the easiest route to achieving what you want.

              Another reactive way of managing this is in some cases is to simply see the range of parameters Google has naturally crawled within Search Console.

              You can see this in the old search console for now. So login and go to Crawl --> URL Parameters.

              If Googlebot has encountered any ?=params it will list them. You'll then have an option how to manage them or exclude them from the index.

              It can be a decent way of cleaning up a site with lot's of indexed pages (1,000+), although please be sure to read this documentation before using it: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6080548?hl=en

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

                With this kind of thing, it's really better to pick the specific parameters (or parameter combinations) which you'd like to exclude, e.g:

                User-agent: *
                
                

                Disallow: /shop/product/&size=*

                Disallow: */shop/product/*?size=* 
                
                

                Disallow: /stockists?product=*

                ^ I just took the above from a robots.txt file which I have been working on, as these particular pages don't have 'pretty' URLs with unique content on. Very soon now that will change and the blocks will be lifted

                If you are really 100% sure that there's only one param which you want to let through, then you'd go with:

                User-agent: *
                
                

                Disallow: /?

                Allow: /?utm_source=google_shopping

                Allow: /*&utm_source=google_shopping*
                

                (or something pretty similar to that!)

                Before you set anything live, get down a list of URLs which represent the blocks (and allows) which you want to achieve. Test it all with the Robots.txt tester (in Search Console) before you set anything live!

                1 Reply 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

                • AspenFasteners

                  What happens to crawled URLs subsequently blocked by robots.txt?

                  We have a very large store with 278,146 individual product pages. Since these are all various sizes and packaging quantities of less than 200 product categories my feeling is that Google would be better off making sure our category pages are indexed. I would like to block all product pages via robots.txt until we are sure all category pages are indexed, then unblock them. Our product pages rarely change, no ratings or product reviews so there is little reason for a search engine to revisit a product page. The sales team is afraid blocking a previously indexed product page will result in in it being removed from the Google index and would prefer to submit the categories by hand, 10 per day via requested crawling. Which is the better practice?

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AspenFasteners
                  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
                • Eric_Lifescript

                  Medical / Health Content Authority - Content Mix Question

                  Greetings, I have an interesting challenge for you. Well, I suppose "interesting" is an understatement, but here goes. Our company is a women's health site. However, over the years our content mix has grown to nearly 50/50 between unique health / medical content and general lifestyle/DIY/well being content (non-health). Basically, there is a "great divide" between health and non-health content. As you can imagine, this has put a serious damper on gaining ground with our medical / health organic traffic. It's my understanding that Google does not see us as an authority site with regard to medical / health content since we "have two faces" in the eyes of Google. My recommendation is to create a new domain and separate the content entirely so that one domain is focused exclusively on health / medical while the other focuses on general lifestyle/DIY/well being. Because health / medical pages undergo an additional level of scrutiny per Google - YMYL pages - it seems to me the only way to make serious ground in this hyper-competitive vertical is to be laser targeted with our health/medical content. I see no other way. Am I thinking clearly here, or have I totally gone insane? Thanks in advance for any reply. Kind regards, Eric

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Eric_Lifescript
                  0
                • 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
                • KS__

                  How to rank for a location/country without having a physical address in that location/country

                  How do I go about it if my physical address (office) is in Country A but I want to rank my website in Country B, C and D (without having an office or physical address in the countries B, C and D)? I am aware of people setting up virtual offices in other countries/cities and adding them to Google Places/Maps with toll free phone numbers, but I don't wish to do any of that. I know Google will catch up with this one day or the other and punish me hard for trying to play games with it. Is there a way rank a website in another country without actually having a physical location there? If yes, please guide me how to go about it.

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KS__
                  0
                • Modbargains

                  Dilemma about "images" folder in robots.txt

                  Hi, Hope you're doing well. I am sure, you guys must be aware that Google has updated their webmaster technical guidelines saying that users should allow access to their css files and java-scripts file if it's possible. Used to be that Google would render the web pages only text based. Now it claims that it can read the css and java-scripts. According to their own terms, not allowing access to the css files can result in sub-optimal rankings. "Disallowing crawling of Javascript or CSS files in your site’s robots.txt directly harms how well our algorithms render and index your content and can result in suboptimal rankings."http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2014/10/updating-our-technical-webmaster.htmlWe have allowed access to our CSS files. and Google bot, is seeing our webapges more like a normal user would do. (tested it in GWT)Anyhow, this is my dilemma. I am sure lot of other users might be facing the same situation. Like any other e commerce companies/websites.. we have lot of images. Used to be that our css files were inside our images folder, so I have allowed access to that. Here's the robots.txt --> http://www.modbargains.com/robots.txtRight now we are blocking images folder, as it is very huge, very heavy, and some of the images are very high res. The reason we are blocking that is because we feel that Google bot might spend almost all of its time trying to crawl that "images" folder only, that it might not have enough time to crawl other important pages. Not to mention, a very heavy server load on Google's and ours. we do have good high quality original pictures. We feel that we are losing potential rankings since we are blocking images. I was thinking to allow ONLY google-image bot, access to it. But I still feel that google might spend lot of time doing that. **I was wondering if Google makes a decision saying, hey let me spend 10 minutes for google image bot, and let me spend 20 minutes for google-mobile bot etc.. or something like that.. , or does it have separate "time spending" allocations for all of it's bot types. I want to unblock the images folder, for now only the google image bot, but at the same time, I fear that it might drastically hamper indexing of our important pages, as I mentioned before, because of having tons & tons of images, and Google spending enough time already just to crawl that folder.**Any advice? recommendations? suggestions? technical guidance? Plan of action? Pretty sure I answered my own question, but I need a confirmation from an Expert, if I am right, saying that allow only Google image access to my images folder. Sincerely,Shaleen Shah

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Modbargains
                  1
                • khi5

                  "noindex, follow" or "robots.txt" for thin content pages

                  Does anyone have any testing evidence what is better to use for pages with thin content, yet important pages to keep on a website? I am referring to content shared across multiple websites (such as e-commerce, real estate etc). Imagine a website with 300 high quality pages indexed and 5,000 thin product type pages, which are pages that would not generate relevant search traffic. Question goes: Does the interlinking value achieved by "noindex, follow" outweigh the negative of Google having to crawl all those "noindex" pages? With robots.txt one has Google's crawling focus on just the important pages that are indexed and that may give ranking a boost. Any experiments with insight to this would be great. I do get the story about "make the pages unique", "get customer reviews and comments" etc....but the above question is the important question here.

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi5
                  0
                • monster99

                  How to Disallow Tag Pages With Robot.txt

                  Hi i have a site which i'm dealing with that has tag pages for instant - http://www.domain.com/news/?tag=choice How can i exclude these tag pages (about 20+ being crawled and indexed by the search engines with robot.txt Also sometimes they're created dynamically so i want something which automatically excludes tage pages from being crawled and indexed. Any suggestions? Cheers, Mark

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | monster99
                  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
                • 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.