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.
Oh no googlebot can not access my robots.txt file
-
I just receive a n error message from google webmaster
Wonder it was something to do with Yoast plugin.
Could somebody help me with troubleshooting this?
Here's original message
Over the last 24 hours, Googlebot encountered 189 errors while attempting to access your robots.txt. To ensure that we didn't crawl any pages listed in that file, we postponed our crawl. Your site's overall robots.txt error rate is 100.0%.
Recommended action
If the site error rate is 100%:
- Using a web browser, attempt to access http://www.soobumimphotography.com//robots.txt. If you are able to access it from your browser, then your site may be configured to deny access to googlebot. Check the configuration of your firewall and site to ensure that you are not denying access to googlebot.
- If your robots.txt is a static page, verify that your web service has proper permissions to access the file.
- If your robots.txt is dynamically generated, verify that the scripts that generate the robots.txt are properly configured and have permission to run. Check the logs for your website to see if your scripts are failing, and if so attempt to diagnose the cause of the failure.
If the site error rate is less than 100%:
- Using Webmaster Tools, find a day with a high error rate and examine the logs for your web server for that day. Look for errors accessing robots.txt in the logs for that day and fix the causes of those errors.
- The most likely explanation is that your site is overloaded. Contact your hosting provider and discuss reconfiguring your web server or adding more resources to your website.
After you think you've fixed the problem, use Fetch as Google to fetch http://www.soobumimphotography.com//robots.txt to verify that Googlebot can properly access your site.
-
I can open text file but Godaddy told me robots.txt file is not on my server (root level).
Also told me that my site is not crawled because robot.txt file is not there.
Basically all of those might have resulted from plug in I was using (term optimizer)
Based on what Godaddy told me, my .htaccess file was crashed because of that and had to be recreated. So now .htaceess file is good.
Now I have to figure out is why my site is not accessible from Googlebot.
Let me know Keith if this is a quick fix or need some time to troubleshoot. You can send me a message to discuss about fees if nessary.
Thanks again
-
Hi,
You have a robots.txt file here: http://www.soobumimphotography.com/robots.txt
Can you write this again in English so it makes sense?
"I called Godaddy and told me if I used any plug ins etc. Godaddy fixed .htaccss file and my site was up and runningjust fine."
Yes google xml sitemaps will add the location of your stitemap to the robots.txt file - but there is nothing wrong with your robots.txt file.
-
I just called Godaddy and told me that I don't have robots.txt tile. Can anyone help with this issue?
So here's what happen:
I purchased Joos de Vailk's Term Optimizer to consolidate tags etc.
As soon as I installed & opened it, my site crashed.
I called Godaddy and told me if I used any plug ins etc. Godaddy fixed .htaccss file and my site was up and runningjust fine.
Isn't plugin like the Google XML Sitemaps automatically generates robots.txt file?
-
Yes, my site was down.
-
I had a .htaccess issue past 24 hour with plug in and Godaddy had fixed it for me.
I think this caused problem.
I just fetched again and still getting unreachable page. I wonder if I have bad .htaccess file
-
Was your site down during this period?
I would recommend setting up pingdom.com (free site monitoring), this will email you if your site goes down - I suspect this is a hosting related issue.
FYI, I can access your robots.txt fine from here.
-
Hi Bistoss, You should log into Google Webmaster Tools to check the day the problem occurred. It is not uncommon for host to have problems that temporarily cause access problems. In some rare cases Google itself could be having problems. For example, in July we had 1 day with a 11% failure rate, it was the host. Since then no problems. If your problems are persistent, then you may have an issue like this: http://blog.jitbit.com/2012/08/fixing-googlebot-cant-access-your-site.html old Analytic code. Other things to look at is any recent changes, specifically anything that had to do with .htaccess Be sure to use the FETCH AS GOOGLE bot after any changes to verify that Google can now crawl your site. Hope this helps
-
I also use Robots Meta Configuration plug in
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
-
I have two robots.txt pages for www and non-www version. Will that be a problem?
There are two robots.txt pages. One for www version and another for non-www version though I have moved to the non-www version.
Technical SEO | | ramb0 -
Is there a limit to how many URLs you can put in a robots.txt file?
We have a site that has way too many urls caused by our crawlable faceted navigation. We are trying to purge 90% of our urls from the indexes. We put no index tags on the url combinations that we do no want indexed anymore, but it is taking google way too long to find the no index tags. Meanwhile we are getting hit with excessive url warnings and have been it by Panda. Would it help speed the process of purging urls if we added the urls to the robots.txt file? Could this cause any issues for us? Could it have the opposite effect and block the crawler from finding the urls, but not purge them from the index? The list could be in excess of 100MM urls.
Technical SEO | | kcb81780 -
Robots.txt and Multiple Sitemaps
Hello, I have a hopefully simple question but I wanted to ask to get a "second opinion" on what to do in this situation. I am working on a clients robots.txt and we have multiple sitemaps. Using yoast I have my sitemap_index.xml and I also have a sitemap-image.xml I do put them in google and bing by hand but wanted to have it added into the robots.txt for insurance. So my question is, when having multiple sitemaps called out on a robots.txt file does it matter if one is before the other? From my reading it looks like you can have multiple sitemaps called out, but I wasn't sure the best practice when writing it up in the file. Example: User-agent: * Disallow: Disallow: /cgi-bin/ Disallow: /wp-admin/ Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/ Sitemap: http://sitename.com/sitemap_index.xml Sitemap: http://sitename.com/sitemap-image.xml Thanks a ton for the feedback, I really appreciate it! :) J
Technical SEO | | allstatetransmission0 -
Remove html file extension and 301 redirects
Hi Recently I ask for some work done on my website from a company, but I am not sure what they've done is right.
Technical SEO | | ulefos
What I wanted was html file extensions to be removed like
/ash-logs.html to /ash-logs
also the index.html to www.timports.co.uk
I have done a crawl diagnostics and have duplicate page content and 32 page title duplicates. This is so doing my head in please help This is what is in the .htaccess file <ifmodule pagespeed_module="">ModPagespeed on
ModPagespeedEnableFilters extend_cache,combine_css, collapse_whitespace,move_css_to_head, remove_comments</ifmodule> <ifmodule mod_headers.c="">Header set Connection keep-alive</ifmodule> <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews</ifmodule> DirectoryIndex index.html RewriteEngine On
# Rewrite valid requests on .html files RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.html -f RewriteRule ^ %{REQUEST_URI}.html?rw=1 [L,QSA]
# Return 404 on direct requests against .html files RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} .html$
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !rw=1 [NC]
RewriteRule ^ - [R=404] AddCharset UTF-8 .html # <filesmatch “.(js|css|html|htm|php|xml|swf|flv|ashx)$”="">#SetOutputFilter DEFLATE #</filesmatch> <ifmodule mod_expires.c="">ExpiresActive On
ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 1 years"
ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 1 years"
ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 1 years"
ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access plus 1 years"
ExpiresByType image/jpg "access plus 1 years"
ExpiresByType text/css "access 1 years"
ExpiresByType text/x-javascript "access 1 years"
ExpiresByType application/javascript "access 1 years"
ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access 1 years"</ifmodule> <files 403.shtml="">order allow,deny allow from all</files> redirect 301 /PRODUCTS http://www.timports.co.uk/kiln-dried-logs
redirect 301 /kindling_firewood.html http://www.timports.co.uk/kindling-firewood.html
redirect 301 /about_us.html http://www.timports.co.uk/about-us.html
redirect 301 /log_delivery.html http://www.timports.co.uk/log-delivery.html redirect 301 /oak_boards_delivery.html http://www.timports.co.uk/oak-boards-delivery.html
redirect 301 /un_edged_oak_boards.html http://www.timports.co.uk/un-edged-oak-boards.html
redirect 301 /wholesale_logs.html http://www.timports.co.uk/wholesale-logs.html redirect 301 /privacy_policy.html http://www.timports.co.uk/privacy-policy.html redirect 301 /payment_failed.html http://www.timports.co.uk/payment-failed.html redirect 301 /payment_info.html http://www.timports.co.uk/payment-info.html1 -
Can too many pages hurt crawling and ranking?
Hi, I work for local yellow pages in Belgium, over the last months we introduced a succesfull technique to boost SEO traffic: we have created over 150k of new pages, all targeting specific keywords and all containing unique content, a site architecture to enable google to find these pages through crawling, xml sitemaps, .... All signs (traffic, indexation of xml sitemaps, rankings, ...) are positive. So far so good. We are able to quickly build more unique pages, and I wonder how google will react to this type of "large scale operation": can it hurt crawling and ranking if google notices big volumes of content (unique content)? Please advice
Technical SEO | | TruvoDirectories0 -
Robots.txt Sitemap with Relative Path
Hi Everyone, In robots.txt, can the sitemap be indicated with a relative path? I'm trying to roll out a robots file to ~200 websites, and they all have the same relative path for a sitemap but each is hosted on its own domain. Basically I'm trying to avoid needing to create 200 different robots.txt files just to change the domain. If I do need to do that, though, is there an easier way than just trudging through it?
Technical SEO | | MRCSearch0 -
Is blocking RSS Feeds with robots.txt necessary?
Is it necessary to block an rss feed with robots.txt? It seems they are automatically not indexed (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/12/taking-feeds-out-of-our-web-search.html) And, google says here that it's important not to block RSS feeds (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/10/using-rssatom-feeds-to-discover-new.html) I'm just checking!
Technical SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
.htacess file format for Apache Server
Hi, My website having canonical issue for home page, I have written the .htaccess file and upload the root directory. But still I didn't see any changes in the home page. I am copying syntax which one I have written in the .htaccess file. Please review the syntax and let me know the changes. Options +FollowSymlinks RewriteEngine on #RewriteBase / re-direct index.htm to root / ### RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.htm\ HTTP/ RewriteRule ^(.)index.htm$ /$1 [R=301,L] re-direct IP address to www ### re-direct non-www to www ### re-direct any parked domain to www of main domain RewriteCond %{http_host} !^www.metricstream.com$ [nc] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.metricstream.com/$1 [r=301,nc,L] Is there any specific htaccess file format for apache server? Thanks, Karthik
Technical SEO | | karthik-1755440