Googlebot does not obey robots.txt disallow
-
Hi Mozzers!
We are trying to get Googlebot to steer away from our internal search results pages by adding a parameter "nocrawl=1" to facet/filter links and then robots.txt disallow all URLs containing that parameter.
We implemented this late august and since that, the GWMT message "Googlebot found an extremely high number of URLs on your site", stopped coming.
But today we received yet another. The weird thing is that Google gives many of our nowadays robots.txt disallowed URLs as examples of URLs that may cause us problems.
What could be the reason?
Best regards,
Martin
-
Sorry for the late reply. Feel free to send me a PM. (not sure I can help, but more than happy to take a look)
-
We do not currently have any sanitation rules in order to maintain the nocrawl param. But that is a good point. 301:ing will be difficult for us but I will definitely add the nocrawl param to the rel canonical of those internal SERPs.
-
Thank you, Igol. I will definitely look into your first suggestion.
-
Thank you, Cyrus.
This is what it looks like:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /nocrawl=1The weird thing is that when testing one of the sample URLs (given by Google as "problematic" in the GWMT message and that contains the nocrawl param) on the GWMT "Blocked URLs" page by entering the contents of our robots.txt and the sample URL, Google says crawling of the URL is disallowed for Googlebot.
On the top of the same page, it says "Never" under the heading "Fetched when" (translated from Swedish..). But when i "Fetch as Google" our robots.txt, Googlebot has no problems fetching it. So i guess the "Never" information is due to a GWMT bug?
I also tested our robots.txt against your recommended service http://www.frobee.com/robots-txt-check. It says all robots has access to the sample URL above, but I gather the tool is not wildcard-savvy.
I will not disclose our domain in this context, please tell me if it is ok to send you a PW.
About the noindex stuff. Basically, the nocrawl param is added to internal links pointing to internal search result pages filtered by more than two params. Although we allow crawling of less complicated internal serps, we disallow indexing of most of them by "meta noindex".
-
Thanks.
100% agree with the Meta Noindex suggestion.
-
It can be tricky blocking parameters with robots.txt. The first thing you want to do is make sure your are actually blocking the URLs. There are a few good robots.txt checkers out there that can help:
You're file is probably going to look something like:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /*?nocrawl=1... but this could vary depending on exactly you don't want crawled
+1 to Igal's suggestion of handling these via parameter settings in Google Webmaster Tools: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1235687
Finally, if your goal is to keep search results out of the index (it probably should be) then you should also highly consider using a meta robots NOINDEX tag on all search results pages. You can also slap a nofollow on links pointing to search results as this might also help Google steer clear of those pages.
Best of luck!
Edit: Here's what John Wu of Google Webmaster has to say...
"We show this warning when we find a high number of URLs on a site -- even before we attempt to crawl them. If you are blocking them with a robots.txt file, that's generally fine. If you really do have a high number of URLs on your site, you can generally ignore this message. If your site is otherwise small and we find a high number of URLs, then this kind of message can help you to fix any issues (or disallow access) before we start to access your server to check gazillions of URLs :-)."
-
Didn't say it wasn't.
I`m just not sure how these rules apply to parameters, since they are not a part of the "core" URL.
(For example: What happens if I take a URL from your site, change a nocrawl=1 to nocrawl=0 and link to it from mine?
Do you have any URL sanitation rules in place to overcome that or will the page be indexed by Googlebot when it crawls my site and moves on to yours?)Personally, when dealing with parameters, I find it easier to work with WMT so I was offering an easier workaround, (at least for me)
To tell you the truth, I would use hard-coded on page meta noindex/nofollow here (again, as parameters can be so easily manipulated).
-
Igal, thank your for replying.
But robots.txt disallowing URLs by matching patterns has been supported by Googlebot for a long time now.
-
Hi
I`m not sure if this is the best way to go about it.
Robots.txt is commonly used for folder level disallow rules, I`m not sure how it will respond to parameters.
Having said that, there are several things you can do here:
1. You can use WMT to zero in on this parameter and prevent it from being searched.
To do so choose Configuration>>URL Parameters, answer "Yes" to the question about content change and
check-in the 3rd bullet (Only URL with value...) Of course you'll need to choose "1" as the right value.2. If this still didn't solve your issue, you might want to try using htacess + regex to prevent access by user agent.
You can find user-agent information here Googlebot user agent listAlso, you may want to check my blog post about some of the less known Googlebot Facts (shameless self-promotion)
Best
Igal
-
I'll send you a PW, Des.
-
What the domain.?
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 Tester - syntax not understood
I've looked in the robots.txt Tester and I can see 3 warnings: There is a 'syntax not understood' warning for each of these. XML Sitemaps:
Technical SEO | | JamesHancocks1
https://www.pkeducation.co.uk/post-sitemap.xml
https://www.pkeducation.co.uk/sitemap_index.xml How do I fix or reformat these to remove the warnings? Many thanks in advance.
Jim0 -
Can I Block https URLs using Host directive in robots.txt?
Hello Moz Community, Recently, I have found that Google bots has started crawling HTTPs urls of my website which is increasing the number of duplicate pages at our website. Instead of creating a separate robots.txt file for https version of my website, can I use Host directive in the robots.txt to suggest Google bots which is the original version of the website. Host: http://www.example.com I was wondering if this method will work and suggest Google bots that HTTPs URLs are the mirror of this website. Thanks for all of the great responses! Regards,
Technical SEO | | TJC.co.uk
Ramendra0 -
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 -
Robots.txt | any SEO advantage to having one vs not having one?
Neither of my sites has a robots.txt file. I guess I have never been bothered by any particular bot enough to exclude it. Is there any SEO advantage to having one anyways?
Technical SEO | | GregB1230 -
'External nofollow' in a robots meta tag? (advertorial links)
I believe this has never worked? It'd be an easy way of preventing any penalties from Google's recent crackdown on paid links via advertorials. When it's not possible to nofollow each external link individually, what are people doing? Nofollowing and/or noindexing the whole page?
Technical SEO | | Alex-Harford0 -
Robots.txt query
Quick question, if this appears in a clients robots.txt file, what does it mean? Disallow: /*/_/ Does it mean no pages can be indexed? I have checked and there are no pages in the index but it's a new site too so not sure if this is the problem. Thanks Karen
Technical SEO | | Karen_Dauncey0 -
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 not working?
Hello This is my robots.txt file http://www.theprinterdepo.com/Robots.txt However I have 8000 warnings on my dashboard like this:4 What am I missing on the file¿ Crawl Diagnostics Report On-Page Properties <dl> <dt>Title</dt> <dd>Not present/empty</dd> <dt>Meta Description</dt> <dd>Not present/empty</dd> <dt>Meta Robots</dt> <dd>Not present/empty</dd> <dt>Meta Refresh</dt> <dd>Not present/empty</dd> </dl> URL: http://www.theprinterdepo.com/catalog/product_compare/add/product/100/uenc/aHR0cDovL3d3dy50aGVwcmludGVyZGVwby5jb20vaHAtbWFpbnRlbmFjZS1raXQtZm9yLTQtbGo0LWxqNS1mb3ItZXhjaGFuZ2UtcmVmdWJpc2hlZA,,/ 0 Errors No errors found! 1 Warning 302 (Temporary Redirect) Found about 5 hours ago <a class="more">Read More</a>
Technical SEO | | levalencia10