What should I block with a robots.txt file?
-
Hi Mozzers,
We're having a hard time getting our site indexed, and I have a feeling my dev team may be blocking too much of our site via our robots.txt file.
They say they have disallowed php and smarty files.
Is there any harm in allowing these pages?
Thanks!
-
Hi Andy, here you go: www.consumerbase.com/robots.txt
I know we want to block the .html files, but I am unsure about the other folders.
I guess I would need to know for certain from my programmers that none of our content is in there?
-
I'm not too hot on Smarty, but doesn't this generate the HTML templates?
However, this shouldn't cause a problem because the files that are being generated are html so as long as they have done this right, it should be fine.
Do you want to ping me the robots file or URL over and I will have a look for you?
Andy
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
-
Google blocks certain articles on my website ... !
Hello I have a website with more than 350 unique articles, Most of them are crawled by Google without a problem, but I find out certain articles are never indexed by Google. I tried to rewrite them, adding fresh images and optimizing them but it gets me nowhere. Lately, I rewrite an article of those and tried to (fetch and render) through Google Webmasters, and I found this result, can you tell me if there is anything to do to fix that? BMVh4
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Evcindex0 -
Application & understanding of robots.txt
Hello Moz World! I have been reading up on robots.txt files, and I understand the basics. I am looking for a deeper understanding on when to deploy particular tags, and when a page should be disallowed because it will affect SEO. I have been working with a software company who has a News & Events page which I don't think should be indexed. It changes every week, and is only relevant to potential customers who want to book a demo or attend an event, not so much search engines. My initial thinking was that I should use noindex/follow tag on that page. So, the pages would not be indexed, but all the links will be crawled. I decided to look at some of our competitors robots.txt files. Smartbear (https://smartbear.com/robots.txt), b2wsoftware (http://www.b2wsoftware.com/robots.txt) & labtech (http://www.labtechsoftware.com/robots.txt). I am still confused on what type of tags I should use, and how to gauge which set of tags is best for certain pages. I figured a static page is pretty much always good to index and follow, as long as it's public. And, I should always include a sitemap file. But, What about a dynamic page? What about pages that are out of date? Will this help with soft 404s? This is a long one, but I appreciate all of the expert insight. Thanks ahead of time for all of the awesome responses. Best Regards, Will H.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarketingChimp100 -
Blocking Certain Site Parameters from Google's Index - Please Help
Hello, So we recently used Google Webmaster Tools in an attempt to block certain parameters on our site from showing up in Google's index. One of our site parameters is essentially for user location and accounts for over 500,000 URLs. This parameter does not change page content in any way, and there is no need for Google to index it. We edited the parameter in GWT to tell Google that it does not change site content and to not index it. However, after two weeks, all of these URLs are still definitely getting indexed. Why? Maybe there's something we're missing here. Perhaps there is another way to do this more effectively. Has anyone else ran into this problem? The path we used to implement this action:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jbake
Google Webmaster Tools > Crawl > URL Parameters Thank you in advance for your help!0 -
FIle Names
HI Guys, Would it make a difference if I named a URL 2014-ford-fiesta.html or 2014+ford+fiesta.html Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | oomdomarketing0 -
Eliminate render blocking javascript and css recommendation?
Our site's last Red flag issue is the "eliminate render blocking javascript and css" message. I don't know how to do that, and while I'm not sure if I could spend hours/days cutting and pasting and guessing until I made progress, I'd rather not. Does anyone know of a plugin that will just do this? Or, if not, how much would it cost to get a web developer to do this? Also, if there is not plugin (and it didn't look like there was when I looked) how long do you think this would take someone who knows what they are doing to complete. The site is: www.kempruge.com Thanks for any tips and/or suggestions, Ruben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Blocking out specific URLs with robots.txt
I've been trying to block out a few URLs using robots.txt, but I can't seem to get the specific one I'm trying to block. Here is an example. I'm trying to block something.com/cats but not block something.com/cats-and-dogs It seems if it setup my robots.txt as so.. Disallow: /cats It's blocking both urls. When I crawl the site with screaming flog, that Disallow is causing both urls to be blocked. How can I set up my robots.txt to specifically block /cats? I thought it was by doing it the way I was, but that doesn't seem to solve it. Any help is much appreciated, thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Whebb0 -
Blocked from google
Hi, i used to get a lot of trafic from google but sudantly there was a problem with the website and it seams to be blocked. We are also in the middle of changing the root domain because we are making a new webpage, i have looked at the webmaster tools and corrected al the errors but the page is still not visible in google. I have also orderd a new crawl. Anyone have any trics? do i loose a lot when i move the domainname, or is this a good thing in this mater? The old one is smakenavitalia.no The new one is Marthecarrara.no Best regards Svein Økland
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sveinokl0 -
We are a web hosting company and some of our best links are from our own customers, on the same IP, but different Class C blocks..
We are a web hosting company and some of our best links are from our own customers, on the same IP same IP, but different Class C blocks. How do search engines treat the uniqie scenario of web hosting companies and linking?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FirePowered0