Will an XML sitemap override a robots.txt
-
I have a client that has a robots.txt file that is blocking an entire subdomain, entirely by accident. Their original solution, not realizing the robots.txt error, was to submit an xml sitemap to get their pages indexed.
I did not think this tactic would work, as the robots.txt would take precedent over the xmls sitemap. But it worked... I have no explanation as to how or why.
Does anyone have an answer to this? or any experience with a website that has had a clear Disallow: / for months , that somehow has pages in the index?
-
The robots file will avoid google to show further information on the disallowed pages but it doesn't prevent indexation.
They're still indexed (that's why you're seeing them) but with no meta desc nor text taken from the page because google wasn't allowed to retrieve more information.
If you want them to start showing info, you'll jsut need to remove that rule from the robots.txt and soon you'll start seeing those pages information showing, but if you want them out of the index you can use GWT to remove them from the index after you've included in each page the noindex meta tag which is the only command which will prevent indexation.
-
I assumed the same thing, but I performed a site command search while they were prospects, and they had 1 result present with the explanation of "A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt – learn more"
They uploaded an xml sitemap before I could tell them to remove the robots.txt. and 1 week later, the entire site is now in the index.
I have used the robots.txt to properly block websites, it usually takes 2-3 for all results to drop out the index, so I don't know how that could explain it either.
-
I agree, the only way I could think this would work would be if the robotx.txt file was on the root domain. I agree, check Webmaster tools, they will tell you under the sitemaps section about "Error: URL was blocked by robots.txt).
One thing to remember is that robots.txt is technically a suggestion to ask search engines not to crawl your site. They can choose to ignore it, though personally I don't know of any cases in which this happenned.
-
An XML sitemap shouldn't override robots.txt. If you have Google Webmaster Tools setup, you will see warnings on the sitemaps page that pages being blocked by robots are being submitted.
Now, robots.txt does not prevent indexation, just crawling. So if the pages were indexed before they implemented robots.txt, they may continue to be indexed. Google will also display just the URL for pages that it's discovered, but can't crawl because of robots.txt.
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
-
Video sitemap
Hello, I'm no Wordpress developer so need a little help please. I have manually created a video sitemap. It needs to be uploaded to the website. Where should the .xml file be uploaded onto Wordpress? Which directory? Is it Ok to add the code to a notepad file and upload? I'm trying to avoid the plugin route if possible. Thanks
Technical SEO | | AL123al0 -
Google Webmaster Tools is saying "Sitemap contains urls which are blocked by robots.txt" after Https move...
Hi Everyone, I really don't see anything wrong with our robots.txt file after our https move that just happened, but Google says all URLs are blocked. The only change I know we need to make is changing the sitemap url to https. Anything you all see wrong with this robots.txt file? robots.txt This file is to prevent the crawling and indexing of certain parts of your site by web crawlers and spiders run by sites like Yahoo! and Google. By telling these "robots" where not to go on your site, you save bandwidth and server resources. This file will be ignored unless it is at the root of your host: Used: http://example.com/robots.txt Ignored: http://example.com/site/robots.txt For more information about the robots.txt standard, see: http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/robots.html For syntax checking, see: http://www.sxw.org.uk/computing/robots/check.html Website Sitemap Sitemap: http://www.bestpricenutrition.com/sitemap.xml Crawlers Setup User-agent: * Allowable Index Allow: /*?p=
Technical SEO | | vetofunk
Allow: /index.php/blog/
Allow: /catalog/seo_sitemap/category/ Directories Disallow: /404/
Disallow: /app/
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /downloader/
Disallow: /includes/
Disallow: /lib/
Disallow: /magento/
Disallow: /pkginfo/
Disallow: /report/
Disallow: /stats/
Disallow: /var/ Paths (clean URLs) Disallow: /index.php/
Disallow: /catalog/product_compare/
Disallow: /catalog/category/view/
Disallow: /catalog/product/view/
Disallow: /catalogsearch/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /control/
Disallow: /contacts/
Disallow: /customer/
Disallow: /customize/
Disallow: /newsletter/
Disallow: /poll/
Disallow: /review/
Disallow: /sendfriend/
Disallow: /tag/
Disallow: /wishlist/
Disallow: /aitmanufacturers/index/view/
Disallow: /blog/tag/
Disallow: /advancedreviews/abuse/reportajax/
Disallow: /advancedreviews/ajaxproduct/
Disallow: /advancedreviews/proscons/checkbyproscons/
Disallow: /catalog/product/gallery/
Disallow: /productquestions/index/ajaxform/ Files Disallow: /cron.php
Disallow: /cron.sh
Disallow: /error_log
Disallow: /install.php
Disallow: /LICENSE.html
Disallow: /LICENSE.txt
Disallow: /LICENSE_AFL.txt
Disallow: /STATUS.txt Paths (no clean URLs) Disallow: /.php$
Disallow: /?SID=
disallow: /?cat=
disallow: /?price=
disallow: /?flavor=
disallow: /?dir=
disallow: /?mode=
disallow: /?list=
disallow: /?limit=5
disallow: /?limit=10
disallow: /?limit=15
disallow: /?limit=20
disallow: /*?limit=250 -
One robots.txt file for multiple sites?
I have 2 sites hosted with Blue Host and was told to put the robots.txt in the root folder and just use the one robots.txt for both sites. Is this right? It seems wrong. I want to block certain things on one site. Thanks for the help, Rena
Technical SEO | | renalynd270 -
Add selective URLs to an XML Sitemap
Hi! Our website has a very large no of pages. I am looking to create an XML Sitemap that contains only the most important pages (category pages etc). However, on crawling the website in a tool like Xenu (the others have a 500 page limit), I am unable to control which pages get added to the XML Sitemap, and which ones get excluded. Essentially, I only want pages that are upto 4 clicks away from my homepage to show up in the XML Sitemap. How should I create an XML sitemap, and at the same time control which pages of my site I add to it (category pages), and which ones I remove (product pages etc). Thanks in advance! Apurv
Technical SEO | | AB_Newbie0 -
Google ranks my sitemap.xml instead of blog post
Hello, For some reason Google shows sitemap results when i search for my blog url website.com/blog/postwhy is Google ranking my sitemap but not a post, especially when i search for full URL? Thanks
Technical SEO | | KentR0 -
Wordpress multilanguage sitemaps
Hi, I have a multilingual wordpress site. which is in Bulgarian and English - translated using qtranslate. The xml sitemap of the 2 languages is in one sitemap file- all the links for the Bulgarian and English version are in one file. (Our web is using this plugin - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-xml-sitemaps-v3-for-qtranslate Do you have any idea how can I make separate xml sitemap for every language? I ask you here because may be you have identical problems with your multilanguage wordpress website. You can see the sitemap with 2 languages links in one sitemap here: http://cholakovit.com/ sitemap.xml Cholakov IT I have read from this article that it is better practise and also it will help with geo-targetazing your web site: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/multiple-xml-sitemaps-increased-indexation-and-traffic
Technical SEO | | vladokan0 -
What are your thoughts on security of placing CMS-related folders in a robots.txt file?
So I was just about to add a whole heap of CMS-related folders to my robots.txt file to exclude them from search, and thought "hey, I'm publicly telling people where my admin folders are"...surely that's not right?! Should I leave them out of the robots.txt file, and hope for the best that they never get indexed? Should I use noindex meta data on every page? What are people's thoughts? Thanks, James PS. I know this is similar to lots of other discussions around meta noindex vs. robots.txt, but I'm after specific thoughts around the security aspect of listing your admin folders in a robots.txt file...
Technical SEO | | James-Distinction0 -
/index.php in sitemap? take it out?
Hi Everyone, The following was automatically generated at xml-sitemaps.com Should I get rid of the index.php url from my sitemap? If so, how do I go about redirecting it in my htaccess ? <url><loc>http://www.mydomain.ca/</loc></url>
Technical SEO | | RogersSEO
<url><loc>http://www.mydomain.ca/index.php</loc></url> thank you in advance, Martin0