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.
Robots.txt to disallow /index.php/ path
-
Hi SEOmoz,
I have a problem with my Joomla site (yeah - me too!). I get a large amount of /index.php/ urls despite using a program to handle these issues. The URLs cause indexation errors with google (404). Now, I fixed this issue once before, but the problem persist. So I thought, instead of wasting more time, couldnt I just disallow all paths containing /index.php/ ?.
I don't use that extension, but would it cause me any problems from an SEO perspective?
How do I disallow all index.php's? Is it a simple: Disallow: /index.php/
-
Hi Cyrus,
Thanks for your reply!
Unfortunately the problem is yet to be fixed, I hope that my disallow will work shortly.
It seems that most of the index.php links to each other internally (and from old /index.php/ pages that no longer exist), which is super weird. How google found them does not make any sense to me.
I don't beleive that external sources are linking to these pages either - I mean, how would they find these links anyway?.
-
Hi Mikkel,
Like Chris, I spidered your site and couldn't find any links to /index.php files, which probably indicates one of two things:
- You've fixed the problem - Yay!
- Or Google is finding those links from external sources
- Google found those links at one time in the past, and is still trying to crawl them.
In the Crawl Errors report in Google Webmaster Tools, if you click on the link of each 404, there's often a "linked from" source where you can see where Google discovered the broken link. This is really helpful in rooting out the cause.
Regardless, I'm going to go with #1 and optimistically believe that you were able to fix the problem.
-
If I spider your site I'm not seeing any /index.php urls. Does that mean you did get Joomla to cooperate with your rewriting?
Or was your problem that you'd previously had urls indexed with /index.php/ paths and you needed to remove them?
-
Hi Mikkel, I have checked your robots.txt, it looks perfect. If you redirect /index.php to home page that using httaccess file or by using any joomla plugin that would great for you. And its also a permanent solution.
-
Well, I tried the sensible solution and redirecting to the correct URL instead. However the SEF program is quite limited and keep on creating new URLs regardless of my modification. Im looking for a more permanent solution, and the disallow seems at bit simple as I'm not a super programmer.
By the way - thanks for quick replys, kudos to both of you!
-
Sure, the website in question is www.vauni.dk
I don't think that there is any inbound links to the index.php pages. They are not easily found.
-
Couldn't you rewrite those /index.php/ urls to remove the /index.php/?
Like this in .htaccess:
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [L]
Only used Joomla once, but there must be a way to configure joomla to just use "/" instead of "/index.php/"?
Update:
Here's a solution to your /index.php/ issue:
http://www.eprcreations.com/remove-index-php-from-joomla-urls/
Once you've updated that, and have your urls working properly without the /index.php/, you could add this slight modification of the rewrite rule above so that all your old /index.php/ urls would be 301'd to your new ones:
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [R=301,L]
Put it underneath the RewriteBase / line they describe in that post.
-
Hi Mikkel,
Do you inbound link pointing to you index.php pages ? If yes, then it might affect your seo. Disallow: /index.ph/ is perfect but after implementing it don't inter link those index.php pages. Can you share me your website URL so that I can show you with example. How to do it.
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
-
Z-indexed content
I have some content on a page that I am not using any type of css hiding techniques, but I am using an image with a higher z-index in order to prevent the text from being seen until a user clicks a link to have the content scroll down. Are there any negative repercussions for doing this in regards to SEO?
Technical SEO | | cokergroup0 -
Blocked jquery in Robots.txt, Any SEO impact?
I've heard that Google is now indexing links and stuff available in javascript and jquery. My webmastertools is showing that some links are blocked in robots.txt of jquery. Sorry I'm not a developer or designer. I want to know is there any impact of this on my SEO? and also how can I unblock it for the robots? Check this screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/3VDWikC.png
Technical SEO | | hammadrafique0 -
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 -
Is Google caching date same as crawling/indexing date?
If a site is cached on say 9 oct 2012 doesn't that also mean that Google crawled it on same date ? And indexed it on same date?
Technical SEO | | Personnel_Concept0 -
Duplicate content problem from an index.php file
Hi One of my sites is flagging a duplicate content problem which is affecting the search rankings. The duplicate problem is caused by http://www.mydomain.com/index.php which has a page rank of 26 How can I sort the duplicate content problem, as the main page should just be http://www.mydomain.com which has a page rank of 42 and is the stronger page with stronger links etc Many Thanks
Technical SEO | | ocelot0 -
How does Google find /feed/ at the end of all pages on my site?
Hi! In Google Webmaster Tools I find *.../feed/ as a 404 page in crawl errors. The problem is that none of these pages exist and they have no inbound links (except the start page). FYI, it´s a wordpress site. Example: www.mysite.com/subpage1/feed/ www.mysite.com/subpage2/feed/ www.mysite.com/subpage3/feed/ etc Does Google search for /feed/ by default or why do I keep getting these 404´s every day?
Technical SEO | | Vivamedia0 -
Video Sitemaps <video:content_loc>and<video:player_loc></video:player_loc></video:content_loc>
Hi guys, If I'm creating a video sitemap do I need to use both: video:content_locandvideo:player_loc</video:player_loc></video:content_loc> Or could I just use video:content_loc?</video:content_loc> Thanks
Technical SEO | | Tug-Agency0 -
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