No indexing url including query string with Robots txt
-
Dear all,
how can I block url/pages with query strings like page.html?dir=asc&order=name with robots txt?
Thanks!
-
Dear all, what is the best option? And are the option below good? A: Disallow
- sort-order (Only URLs with value = asc)
"A single URL may contain many parameters for each of which you can specify settings. More restrictive settings override less restrictive settings. For example, here are three parameters and their settings"
source:
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1235687
B: User-agent:
Googlebot Disallow: /*.=name$
for example www.sub.domain.com/collection.html?dir=desc&order=name source: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=156449
Thanks!
-
You could always just use rel="canonical" which would be much better than completely blocking all URL parameters.
-
Hey,
Should that second URL be www.sub.domain.com/collection/adresboeken.html?whatever=something If so, then by using /collection/?* you are saying that anything within /collection/ with a query string should not be indexed. If adresboeken.html always has a query string, it may not get indexed.
The other options I'd consider before using robots.txt are telling Google to ignore dir=desc&order=color in Google Webmaster Tools parameter handling. This is the best way to handle query string issues. (Assuming you are trying to influence Google. Clearly Google Webmaster Tools won't affect Bing!)
Another idea is to set a canonical URL on /collection/adresboeken.html referencing /collection/adresboeken.html without the query string. This tells the search engines that the query strings do not make a unique URL. (adresboeken.html?dir=desc&order=color is the same as adresboeken.html?dir=desc&order=price is the same as adresboeken.html?dir=asc&order=color is the same as adresboeken.html, and so on).
I hope that helps. Thanks,
Matthew -
Hi,
Robots.txt works mainly on 2 rules. Those are User-agent: and Disallow:
User-agent: the name of the robot you need to block
Disallow: the url or folder or other url with conditions you need to block.
As you have asked in your question you need to block a url with a condition. But you have to remember that Robot.txt is giving so critical results if you did not use it correctly.
Anyway in your question, you wanted to block url/pages with query strings like page.html?dir=asc&order=name
so you have to use following:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /*?
So the above will block all the urls with a question mark (?) for all the search robots. This will not block only page.html?dir=asc&order=name it will alos block comments.html?dir=asc&order=name
So use it so carefully.
Hope this is the what you have looked for. If need more help you may ask.
Regards
Prasad
-
Dear all,
thanks for responding. If I have a pages like
1. www.sub.domain.com/collection.html exists, I want to index it, and
2. www.sub.domain.com/collection.html?dir=desc&order=color which I don't want to index
Is this the way to do this in de robots.txt?:
Disallow: /collection/?*
Thanks!
-
Hi,
Here is an article explaining how to do this in robots.txt:
http://sanzon.wordpress.com/2008/04/29/advanced-usage-of-robotstxt-w-querystrings/Depending on what you are trying to do, it might also be worth investigating parameter handling in Google Webmaster Tools:
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1235687Thanks,
Matthew
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
-
Robots.txt blocking Addon Domains
I have this site as my primary domain: http://www.libertyresourcedirectory.com/ I don't want to give spiders access to the site at all so I tried to do a simple Disallow: / in the robots.txt. As a test I tried to crawl it with Screaming Frog afterwards and it didn't do anything. (Excellent.) However, there's a problem. In GWT, I got an alert that Google couldn't crawl ANY of my sites because of robots.txt issues. Changing the robots.txt on my primary domain, changed it for ALL my addon domains. (Ex. http://ethanglover.biz/ ) From a directory point of view, this makes sense, from a spider point of view, it doesn't. As a solution, I changed the robots.txt file back and added a robots meta tag to the primary domain. (noindex, nofollow). But this doesn't seem to be having any effect. As I understand it, the robots.txt takes priority. How can I separate all this out to allow domains to have different rules? I've tried uploading a separate robots.txt to the addon domain folders, but it's completely ignored. Even going to ethanglover.biz/robots.txt gave me the primary domain version of the file. (SERIOUSLY! I've tested this 100 times in many ways.) Has anyone experienced this? Am I in the twilight zone? Any known fixes? Thanks. Proof I'm not crazy in attached video. robotstxt_addon_domain.mp4
Technical SEO | | eglove0 -
High DA url rewrite to your url...would it increase the Ranking of a website?
Hi, my client use a recruiting management tool called njoyn.com. The url of his site look like: www.example.njoyn.com. Would it increase his ranking if I use this Url above that point to njoyn domain wich has a high DA, and rewrite it to his site www.example.com? If yes how? Thanks
Technical SEO | | bigrat950 -
How to Remove /feed URLs from Google's Index
Hey everyone, I have an issue with RSS /feed URLs being indexed by Google for some of our Wordpress sites. Have a look at this Google query, and click to show omitted search results. You'll see we have 500+ /feed URLs indexed by Google, for our many category pages/etc. Here is one of the example URLs: http://www.howdesign.com/design-creativity/fonts-typography/letterforms/attachment/gilhelveticatrade/feed/. Based on this content/code of the XML page, it looks like Wordpress is generating these: <generator>http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.2</generator> Any idea how to get them out of Google's index without 301 redirecting them? We need the Wordpress-generated RSS feeds to work for various uses. My first two thoughts are trying to work with our Development team to see if we can get a "noindex" meta robots tag on the pages, by they are dynamically-generated pages...so I'm not sure if that will be possible. Or, perhaps we can add a "feed" paramater to GWT "URL Parameters" section...but I don't want to limit Google from crawling these again...I figure I need Google to crawl them and see some code that says to get the pages out of their index...and THEN not crawl the pages anymore. I don't think the "Remove URL" feature in GWT will work, since that tool only removes URLs from the search results, not the actual Google index. FWIW, this site is using the Yoast plugin. We set every page type to "noindex" except for the homepage, Posts, Pages and Categories. We have other sites on Yoast that do not have any /feed URLs indexed by Google at all. Side note, the /robots.txt file was previously blocking crawling of the /feed URLs on this site, which is why you'll see that note in the Google SERPs when you click on the query link given in the first paragraph.
Technical SEO | | M_D_Golden_Peak0 -
A few misc Webmaster tools questions & Robots.txt etc
Hi I have a few general misc questions re Robots.tx & GWT: 1) In the Robots.txt file what do the below lines block, internal search ? Disallow: /?
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence
Disallow: /*? 2) Also the sites feeds are blocked in robots.txt, why would you want to block a sites feeds ? **3) **What's the best way to deal with the below: - old removed page thats returning a 500 response code ? - a soft 404 for an old removed page that has no current replacement old removed pages returning a 404 The old pages didn't have any authority or inbound links hence is it best/ok to simply create a url removal request in GWT ? Cheers Dan0 -
Robots.txt and joomla
Hello, I use joomla for my website and automatically all those files are blocked is that good or bad, so I remove anything and if so why ? User-agent: *
Technical SEO | | seoanalytics
Disallow: /administrator/
Disallow: /cache/
Disallow: /components/
Disallow: /images/
Disallow: /includes/
Disallow: /installation/
Disallow: /language/
Disallow: /libraries/
Disallow: /media/
Disallow: /modules/
Disallow: /plugins/
Disallow: /templates/
Disallow: /tmp/
Disallow: /xmlrpc/ I also added to my robots.txt files my email address ( is that useful, I am afraid google passes PR to the email address )
and a javascript: void (0) because I have tabs on my webpage ( is that useful )
as well as a .pdf ( is it also useful ) any comments ? does anything need to be changed or is it ok ? Thank you,0 -
URL query considered duplicate content?
I have a Magento site. In order to reduce duplicate content for products of the same style but with different colours I have combined them on to 1 product page. I would like to allow the pictures to be dynamic, i.e. allow a user to search for a colour and all the products that offer that colour appear in the results, but I dont want the default product image shown but the product image for that colour applying to the query. Therefore to do this I have to append a query string to the end of the URL to produce this result: www.website.com/category/product-name.html?=red My question is, will the query variations then be picked up as duplicate content: www.website.com/category/product-name.html www.website.com/category/product-name.html?=red www.website.com/category/product-name.html?=yellow Google suggest it has contingencies in its algorithm and I will not be penalised: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2007/09/google-duplicate-content-caused-by-url.html But other sources suggest this is not accurate. Note the article was written in 2007.
Technical SEO | | BlazeSunglass0 -
Can I Disallow Faceted Nav URLs - Robots.txt
I have been disallowing /*? So I know that works without affecting crawling. I am wondering if I can disallow the faceted nav urls. So disallow: /category.html/? /category2.html/? /category3.html/*? To prevent the price faceted url from being cached: /category.html?price=1%2C1000
Technical SEO | | tylerfraser
and
/category.html?price=1%2C1000&product_material=88 Thanks!0 -
Query string in url - duplicate content?
Hi everyone I would appreciate some advice on the following. I have a page which has some nice content on but it also has a search functionality. When a search is run a querystrong is run. So i will get something like mypage.php?id=20 etc. With many different url potentials, will each query string be seen as a different page? If so i don't want duplicate content. So am i best putting canonical tags in the head tags on mypage.php ? to avoid Google seeing potential duplicate content. Many thanks for all your advice.
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0