Trying to reduce pages crawled to within 10K limit via robots.txt
-
Our site has far too many pages for our 10K page PRO account which are not SEO worthy. In fact, only about 2000 pages qualify for SEO value. Limitations of the store software only permit me to use robots.txt to sculpt the rogerbot site crawl. However, I am having trouble getting this to work. Our biggest problem is the 35K individual product pages and the related shopping cart links (at least another 35K); these aren't needed as they duplicate the SEO-worthy content in the product category pages.
The signature of a product page is that it is contained within a folder ending in -p. So I made the following addition to robots.txt:
User-agent: rogerbot
Disallow: /-p/However, the latest crawl results show the 10K limit is still being exceeded. I went to Crawl Diagnostics and clicked on Export Latest Crawl to CSV. To my dismay I saw the report was overflowing with product page links:
e.g. www.aspenfasteners.com/3-Star-tm-Bulbing-Type-Blind-Rivets-Anodized-p/rv006-316x039354-coan.htm
The value for the column "Search Engine blocked by robots.txt" = FALSE; does this mean blocked for all search engines? Then it's correct. If it means "blocked for rogerbot? Then it shouldn't even be in the report, as the report seems to only contain 10K pages.
Any thoughts or hints on trying to attain my goal would REALLY be appreciated, I've been trying for weeks now. Honestly - virtual beers for everyone!
Carlo
-
Wow! thank you, many of the robots.txt testers still show them as disallow, good to know! thank you!
-
Hi Andres!
Sorry, I thought I answered this earlier. If I understand correctly wildcards ARE allowed, according to this reply to my question on the topic: http://www.seomoz.org/q/does-rogerbot-read-url-wildcards-in-robots-txt
Hope THIS reply sticks this time!
-
Hi, as far as I know wildcard characters (like "*") are not allowed there, the line must be an allow, disallow, comment or a blank line statement, so before you get angry at Roger for not listening to you, go to Google Webmaster Tools > Crawler Access and test the robots.txt file. Hope it works.
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 allows wp-admin/admin-ajax.php
Hello, Mozzers!
Technical SEO | | AndyKubrin
I noticed something peculiar in the robots.txt used by one of my clients: Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php What would be the purpose of allowing a search engine to crawl this file?
Is it OK? Should I do something about it?
Everything else on /wp-admin/ is disallowed.
Thanks in advance for your help.
-AK:2 -
Site Crawl -> Duplicate Page Content -> Same pages showing up with duplicates that are not
These, for example: | https://im.tapclicks.com/signup.php/?utm_campaign=july15&utm_medium=organic&utm_source=blog | 1 | 2 | 29 | 2 | 200 |
Technical SEO | | writezach
| https://im.tapclicks.com/signup.php?_ga=1.145821812.1573134750.1440742418 | 1 | 1 | 25 | 2 | 200 |
| https://im.tapclicks.com/signup.php?utm_source=tapclicks&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=brightpod-article | 1 | 119 | 40 | 4 | 200 |
| https://im.tapclicks.com/signup.php?utm_source=tapclicks&utm_medium=marketplace&utm_campaign=homepage | 1 | 119 | 40 | 4 | 200 |
| https://im.tapclicks.com/signup.php?utm_source=blog&utm_campaign=first-3-must-watch-videos | 1 | 119 | 40 | 4 | 200 |
| https://im.tapclicks.com/signup.php?_ga=1.159789566.2132270851.1418408142 | 1 | 5 | 31 | 2 | 200 |
| https://im.tapclicks.com/signup.php/?utm_source=vocus&utm_medium=PR&utm_campaign=52release | Any suggestions/directions for fixing or should I just disregard this "High Priority" moz issue? Thank you!0 -
Robots.txt on refinements
In dealing with Panda do you think it is a good idea to put all refinements for category pages in the robots.txt file? We already have a lot as noindex, follow but I am wondering if it would be better to address from a crawl perspective as the pages are probably thin duplicate content to Google.
Technical SEO | | Gordian0 -
HTTP Status showing up in opensiteexplorer top pages as blocked by robot.txt file
I am trying to find an answer to this question it has alot of url on this page with no data when i go into the data source and search for noindex or robot.txt but the site is visible in the search engines ?
Technical SEO | | ReSEOlve0 -
Robots.txt file
How do i get Google to stop indexing my old pages and start indexing my new pages even months down the line? Do i need to install a Robots.txt file on each page?
Technical SEO | | gimes0 -
Same URL in "Duplicate Content" and "Blocked by robots.txt"?
How can the same URL show up in Seomoz Crawl Diagnostics "Most common errors and warnings" in both the "Duplicate Content"-list and the "Blocked by robots.txt"-list? Shouldnt the latter exclude it from the first list?
Technical SEO | | alsvik0 -
Is it better to delete web pages that I don't want anymore or should I 301 redirect all of the pages I delete to the homepage or another live page?
Is it better for SEO to delete web pages that I don't want anymore or should I 301 redirect all of the pages I delete to the homepage or another live page?
Technical SEO | | CustomOnlineMarketing0 -
Robots.txt and robots meta
I have an odd situation. I have a CMS that has a global robots.txt which has the generic User-Agent: *
Technical SEO | | Highland
Allow: / I also have one CMS site that needs to not be indexed ever. I've read in various pages (like http://www.jesterwebster.com/robots-txt-vs-meta-tag-which-has-precedence/22 ) that robots.txt always wins over meta, but I have also read that robots.txt indicates spiderability whereas meta can control indexation. I just want the site to not be indexed. Can I leave the robots.txt as is and still put NOINDEX in the robots meta?0