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.
Does Bing ignore robots txt files?
-
Bonjour from "Its a miracle is not raining" Wetherby Uk
Ok here goes... Why despite a robots text file excluding indexing to site
http://lewispr.netconstruct-preview.co.uk/ is the site url being indexed in Bing bit not Google?
Does bing ignore robots text files or is there something missing from http://lewispr.netconstruct-preview.co.uk/robots.txt I need to add to stop bing indexing a preview site as illustrated below.
http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/preview-bing-indexed.jpg
Any insights welcome
-
Thanks Clever PHD - we are now adding your recommendations to our preview sites
-
I know this does not sound related, but Matt Cutts explains this same situation on Google. It is probably the same reasoning for Bing.
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/robots-txt-remove-url/
Looking at your screen shot, it looks as if all that is being shown in Bing is just the URL, no title tag, description, no other information.
What Matt says is that they did not technically crawl the url, but they are aware that it exists. Example, there is another page linking to it with related content or the anchor tag on the link relates to the keyword search you are performing.
You are searching for the URL specifically and so it makes sense that they would show the URL as it relates to that search, but they are not showing any information from the page as they do not have it as they did not spider it, again, they are just aware of the URL. Kind of like talking to a lawyer eh?
If you search for any other keywords does this excluded site show up? Probably not. If the do, then they are probably only showing the URL like in the example above.
The video has more details. Here are the solutions he gives, I will outline them as well
-
Use the Bing URL removal tool - bing bang boom. Done.
-
(my new favorite) Let the page / site be indexed but then show an noindex nofollow meta tag on the page / site. There is a subtle but important difference in the meta tag vs the robot.txt file. The spiders have to be able to crawl the page to be able to see what they are supposed to do with it.
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=93710
"When we see the noindex meta tag on a page, Google will completely drop the page from our search results, even if other pages link to it."
The thing is, if you have a robots.txt file that says don't crawl the site, then the spider never gets to the noindex meta tag to know to delete the page from the index. It sounds a little backwards, but when the page is already in the search index, you have to let the spider crawl it to then see the noindex tag so that the search engine will know to remove it from the index.
Here is what you can do as this seems to only be an issue with Bing and just with the home page. Open up the robots.txt to allow Bing to crawl the site. Restrict the crawling to the home page only and exclude all the other pages from the crawl.
On the home page that you allow Bing to crawl, add the noindex no follow meta tag and you should be set.
All of that said.
If you have a single URL listed in bing with no meta data, it may not be worth all the above effort as you are not ranking for any valuable key words, but that is your call
It is always interesting to see how the spiders and engines think so I wanted to pass this along.
Cheers!
PS - If you have a ton of pages like this - then you just would allow Bing to crawl them all and add the noindex nofollow tag to all of them.
-
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 Temporary redirect from 302 to 301 for PNG File?
#302HTTP #temporaryredirect
Technical SEO | | Damian_Ed 0
Hi everyone, Recently I have faced a crawl issue with my media images on website. For example this page url https://intreface.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Horion-screen-side-2.png has 302 HTTP Status and the recommendation is to change it 301. I have read the article on temporary redirections here:
https://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection?_ga=2.45324708.1293586627.1702571936-916254120.1702571936
but its not written here how to redirect in my HTML 1 image url not the landing page.
Screenshot 2023-12-15 at 11.02.40.png
I have messaged to MOZ Support but they recommended to go for the MOZ Community!
Screenshot 2023-12-15 at 11.06.02.png Could you assist me wit this issue please? I can reach HTTML of the necessary page and change what I need for permanent redirection but firstly I need to understand how to do that correctly.0 -
How do I complete a reverse DNS check when completing log file analysis?
I'm doing some log file analysis and need to run a reverse DNS check to ensure that I'm analysing logs from Google and not any imposters. Is there a command I can use in terminal to do this? If not, whats the best way to verify Googlebot? Thanks
Technical SEO | | daniel-brooks0 -
Bing webmaster tools incorrectly showing missing title and description tags
Hey all, Was wondering if anyone else has come across this issue. Bing is showing title and description tags missing in the head of my wordpress blog. I can't seem to find any documentation on this. Thanks, Roman
Technical SEO | | Dynata_panel_marketing0 -
One robots.txt file for multiple sites?
I have 2 sites hosted with Blue Host and was told to put the robots.txt in the root folder and just use the one robots.txt for both sites. Is this right? It seems wrong. I want to block certain things on one site. Thanks for the help, Rena
Technical SEO | | renalynd270 -
Error report in Bing Evaluated size of HTML....
Hi Whilst checking Bing's SEO analyser I got this error message for our page www.tidy-books.co.uk/childrens-bookcases "Evaluated size of HTML is estimated to be over 125 KB and risks not being fully cached. (Issue marker for this rule is not visible in the current view)" Just wondering what needs to be done about it and what it actually means? Thanks
Technical SEO | | tidybooks0 -
Are robots.txt wildcards still valid? If so, what is the proper syntax for setting this up?
I've got several URL's that I need to disallow in my robots.txt file. For example, I've got several documents that I don't want indexed and filters that are getting flagged as duplicate content. Rather than typing in thousands of URL's I was hoping that wildcards were still valid.
Technical SEO | | mkhGT0 -
Allow or Disallow First in Robots.txt
If I want to override a Disallow directive in robots.txt with an Allow command, do I have the Allow command before or after the Disallow command? example: Allow: /models/ford///page* Disallow: /models////page
Technical SEO | | irvingw0 -
Robots.txt file getting a 500 error - is this a problem?
Hello all! While doing some routine health checks on a few of our client sites, I spotted that a new client of ours - who's website was not designed built by us - is returning a 500 internal server error when I try to look at the robots.txt file. As we don't host / maintain their site, I would have to go through their head office to get this changed, which isn't a problem but I just wanted to check whether this error will actually be having a negative effect on their site / whether there's a benefit to getting this changed? Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | themegroup0