Googlebot Can't Access My Sites After I Repair My Robots File
-
Hello Mozzers,
A colleague and I have been collectively managing about 12 brands for the past several months and we have recently received a number of messages in the sites' webmaster tools instructing us that 'Googlebot was not able to access our site due to some errors with our robots.txt file'
My colleague and I, in turn, created new robots.txt files with the intention of preventing the spider from crawling our 'cgi-bin' directory as follows:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
After creating the robots and manually re-submitting it in Webmaster Tools (and receiving the green checkbox), I received the same message about Googlebot not being able to access the site, only difference being that this time it was for a different site that I manage.
I repeated the process and everything, aesthetically looked correct, however, I continued receiving these messages for each of the other sites I manage on a daily-basis for roughly a 10-day period.
Do any of you know why I may be receiving this error? is it not possible for me to block the Googlebot from crawling the 'cgi-bin'?
Any and all advice/insight is very much welcome, I hope I'm being descriptive enough!
-
Oleg gave a great answer.
Still I would add 2 things here:
1. Go to GWMT and under "Health" do a "Fetch as Googlebot" test.
This will tell you what pages are reachable.2. I`ve saw some occasions of server-level Googlebot blockage.
If your robots.txt is fine and your page contains no "no-index" tags, and yet you still getting an error message while fetching, you should get a hold on your access logs and check it for Googlebot user-agents to see if (and when) you were last visited.This will help you pin-point the issue, when talking to your hosting provider (or 3rd party security vendor).
If unsure, you can find Googlebot information (user agent and IPs ) at Botopedia.org.
-
A great answer
-
Maybe the spacing is off when you posted it here, but blank lines can affect robots.txt files. Try code:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
#End Robots#Also, check for robot blocking meta tags on the individual pages.
You can test to see if Google can access specific pages through GWT > Health > Blocked URLs (should see your robots.txt file contents int he top text area, enter the urls to test in the 2nd text area, then press "Test" at the bottom - test results will appear at the bottom of the page)
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
-
Merging B2B site with B2C site
Hi, A mobile phone accessory client of ours has a retail site (B2C) and a trade site (B2B). The retail site does pretty well and ranks highly for a number of terms. The trade site doesn't really rank for anything as they don't optimise it. They would like to merge the two sites and allow trade customers to log-in and purchase goods in bulk for their business. If they were to merge the trade site into the already successful consumer site, what would be the best way of doing this and what, if any, implications would it have on the organic visibility of the B2C site? Would it be possible to target retail and trade customers on one website? Cheers, Lewis
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeaSoupDigital0 -
Can anyone see any issues with the canonical tags on this web site?
The main domain is: http://www.eumom.ie/ And these would be some of the core pages: http://www.eumom.ie/pregnancy/ http://www.eumom.ie/getting-pregnant/ Any help from the Moz community is much appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IcanAgency0 -
Investigating Google's treatment of different pages on our site - canonicals, addresses, and more.
Hey all - I hesitate to ask this question, but have spent weeks trying to figure it out to no avail. We are a real estate company and many of our building pages do not show up for a given address. I first thought maybe google did not like us, but we show up well for certain keywords 3rd for Houston office space and dallas office space, etc. We have decent DA and inbound links, but for some reason we do not show up for addresses. An example, 44 Wall St or 44 Wall St office space, we are no where to be found. Our title and description should allow us to easily picked up, but after scrolling through 15 pages (with a ton of non relevant results), we do not show up. This happens quite a bit. I have checked we are being crawled by looking at 44 Wall St TheSquareFoot and checking the cause. We have individual listing pages (with the same titles and descriptions) inside the buildings, but use canonical tags to let google know that these are related and want the building pages to be dominant. I have worked though quite a few tests and can not come up with a reason. If we were just page 7 and never moved it would be one thing, but since we do not show up at all, it almost seems like google is punishing us. My hope is there is one thing that we are doing wrong that is easily fixed. I realize in an ideal world we would have shorter URLs and other nits and nats, but this feels like something that would help us go from page 3 to page 1, not prevent us from ranking at all. Any thoughts or helpful comments would be greatly appreciated. http://www.thesquarefoot.com/buildings/ny/new-york/10005/lower-manhattan/44-wall-st/44-wall-street We do show up one page 1 for this building - http://www.thesquarefoot.com/buildings/ny/new-york/10036/midtown/1501-broadway, but is the exception. I have tried investigating any differences, but am quite baffled.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AtticusBerg10 -
Don't affiliate programs have an unfair impact on a company's ability to compete with bigger businesses?
So many coupon sites and other websites these days will only link to your website if you have a relationship with Commission Junction or one of the other large affiliate networks. It seems to me that links on these sites are really unfair as they allow businesses with deep pockets to acquire links unequitably. To me it seems like these are "paid links", as the average website cannot afford the cost of running an affiliate program. Even worse, the only reason why these businesses are earning a link is because they have an affiliate program; that to me should violate some sort of Google rule about types and values of links. The existence of an affiliate program as the only reason for earning a link is preposterous. It's just as bad as paid link directories that have no editorial standards. I realize the affiliate links are wrapped in CJ's code, so that mush diminish the value of the link, but there is still tons of good value in having the brand linked to from these high authority sites.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | williamelward0 -
Moving from a static HTML CSS site with .html files to a Wordpress Site while keeping link structure
Mozzers, Hope this finds you well. I need some advice. We have a site built with a dreamweaver template, and it is lacking in responsiveness, ease of updates, and a lot of the coding is behind traditional web standards (which I know will start to hurt our rank - if not the user experience). For SEO purposes, we would like to move the existing static based site to Wordpress so we can update it easily and keep content fresh. Our current site, thriveboston.com, has a lot of page extensions ending in .html. For the transition, it is extremely important for us to keep the link structure. We rank well in the SERPs for Boston Counseling, etc... I found and tested a plugin (offline) that can add a .html extension to Wordpress pages, which allows us to keep our current structure, but has anyone had any luck with this live? Has anyone had any luck moving from a static site - to a Wordpress site - while keeping the current link structure - without hurting any rank? We hope to move soon because if the site continues to grow, it will become even harder to migrate the site over. Also, does anyone have any hesitations? It this a bad move? Should we just stay on the current DWT template (the HTML and CSS) and not migrate? Any suggestions and advice will be heeded. Thanks Mozzers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | _Thriveworks0 -
Are htm files stronger than aspx files?
Hello All, I once read that htm files are considered stronger (SEO wise) than aspx files and I wondered if that is correct. Obviously, I mean the static part of aspx files for example making my about us page in htm and not aspx. Among the advantages of aspx is the usage of a master page (a template) for the design etc. Any thoughts? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet0 -
My homepage doesn't rank anymore. It's been replaced by irrelevant subpages which rank around 100-200 instead of top 5.
Hey guys, I think I got some kind of penalty for my homepage. I was in top5 for my keywords. Then a few days ago, my homepage stopped ranking for anything except searching for my domain name in Google. sitename.com/widget-reviews/ previously ranked #3 for "widget reviews"
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wearetribe
but now....
sitename.com/widget-training-for-pet-cats/ is ranking #84 for widget reviews instead. Similarly across all my other keywords, irrelevant, wrong pages are ranking. Did I get some kind of penalty?0 -
Site views messy in a text browser, but can see all text, is that a problem?
In Google's webmaster guidelines, they mention to view your site in a text browser to ensure all text is visible. All of our text is visible, but is very messy and is all jumbled on the page. I've noticed most sites text browser layout is clean. H How important is it to SEO that the site views cleanly in a text browser? Does anyone know of any feedback from Google engineers about this point?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0