"Extremely high number of URLs" warning for robots.txt blocked pages
-
I have a section of my site that is exclusively for tracking redirects for paid ads. All URLs under this path do a 302 redirect through our ad tracking system:
http://www.mysite.com/trackingredirect/blue-widgets?ad_id=1234567 --302--> http://www.mysite.com/blue-widgets
This path of the site is blocked by our robots.txt, and none of the pages show up for a site: search.
User-agent: *
Disallow: /trackingredirect
However, I keep receiving messages in Google Webmaster Tools about an "extremely high number of URLs", and the URLs listed are in my redirect directory, which is ostensibly not indexed.
If not by robots.txt, how can I keep Googlebot from wasting crawl time on these millions of /trackingredirect/ links?
-
Awesome, good to know things are all okay!
-
Yes, Google does not appear to be crawling or indexing any of the pages in question, and GWT doesn't note any issues with crawl budget.
-
And everything looks okay in your GWT?
-
This is what my other research has suggested, as well. Google is "discovering" millions of URLs that go into a queue to get crawled, and they're reporting the extremely high number of URLs in Webmaster Tools before they actually attempt to crawl, and see that all these URLs are blocked by robots.txt.
-
Hi Ehren,
Google has said that they send those warnings before they actually crawl your site (why they would bother you with a warning so quickly, I don't know), so I wouldn't worry about this if the warning is the only sign you're getting that Google might be crawling disallowed pages.
What is your Google Webmaster Tools account saying? If Google isn't reporting to you that it's spending too long crawling your site, and the correct number of pages are indexed, you should be fine.
Let me know if this is a bigger problem!
Kristina
-
Federico, my concern is how do I get Google to spend spending so much crawl time on those pages. I don't want Google to waste time crawling pages that are blocked in my robots.txt.
-
There's nothing you need to do. If you don't want those pages to be indexed leaving the robots.txt as it is is fine.
You can mark that in your Webmaster Tools as fixed and Google won't notify you again.
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
-
Best way to create robots.txt for my website
How I can create robots.txt file for my website guitarcontrol.com ? It is having login and Guitar lessons.
Technical SEO | | zoe.wilson170 -
Robots.txt
Hi All Having a robots.txt looking like the below will this stop Google crawling the site User-agent: *
Technical SEO | | internetsalesdrive0 -
"One Page With Two Links To Same Page; We Counted The First Link" Is this true?
I read this to day http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-one-page-two-links-page-counted-first-link-192718 I thought to myself, yep, thats what I been reading in Moz for years ( pitty Matt could not confirm that still the case for 2014) But reading though the comments Michael Martinez of http://www.seo-theory.com/ pointed out that Mat says "...the last time I checked, was 2009, and back then -- uh, we might, for example, only have selected one of the links from a given page."
Technical SEO | | PaddyDisplays
Which would imply that is does not not mean it always the first link. Michael goes on to say "Back in 2008 when Rand WRONGLY claimed that Google was only counting the first link (I shared results of a test where it passed anchor text from TWO links on the same page)" then goes on to say " In practice the search engine sometimes skipped over links and took anchor text from a second or third link down the page." For me this is significant. I know people that have had "SEO experts" recommend that they should have a blog attached to there e-commence site and post blog posts (with no real interest for readers) with anchor text links to you landing pages. I thought that posting blog post just for anchor text link was a waste of time if you are already linking to the landing page with in a main navigation as google would see that link first. But if Michael is correct then these type of blog posts anchor text link blog posts would have value But who is' right Rand or Michael?0 -
Do i have my robots.txt file set up properly
Hi, just doing some seo on my site and i am not sure if i have my robots file set correctly. i use joomla and my website is www.in2town.co.uk. here is my robots file, does this look correct to you User-agent: *
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-184886
Disallow: /administrator/
Disallow: /cache/
Disallow: /components/
Disallow: /includes/
Disallow: /installation/
Disallow: /language/
Disallow: /libraries/
Disallow: /media/
Disallow: /modules/
Disallow: /plugins/
Disallow: /templates/
Disallow: /tmp/
Disallow: /xmlrpc/ many thanks1 -
What's our easiest, quickest "win" for page load speed?
This is a follow up question to an earlier thread located here: http://www.seomoz.org/q/we-just-fixed-a-meta-refresh-unified-our-link-profile-and-now-our-rankings-are-going-crazy In that thread, Dr. Pete Meyers said "You'd really be better off getting all that script into external files." Our IT Director is willing to spend time working on this, but he believes it is a complicated process because each script must be evaluated to determine which ones are needed "pre" page load and which ones can be loaded "post." Our IT Director went on to say that he believes the quickest "win" we could get would be to move our SSL javascript for our SSL icon (in our site footer) to an internal page, and just link to that page from an image of the icon in the footer. He says this javascript, more than any other, slows our page down. My question is two parts: 1. How can I verify that this javascript is indeed, a major culprit of our page load speed? 2. Is it possible that it is slow because so many styles have been applied to the surrounding area? In other words, if I stripped out the "Secured by" text and all the syles associated with that, could that effect the efficiency of the script? 3. Are there any negatives to moving that javascript to an interior landing page, leaving the icon as an image in the footer and linking to the new page? Any thoughts, suggestions, comments, etc. are greatly appreciated! Dana
Technical SEO | | danatanseo0 -
Oh no googlebot can not access my robots.txt file
I just receive a n error message from google webmaster Wonder it was something to do with Yoast plugin. Could somebody help me with troubleshooting this? Here's original message Over the last 24 hours, Googlebot encountered 189 errors while attempting to access your robots.txt. To ensure that we didn't crawl any pages listed in that file, we postponed our crawl. Your site's overall robots.txt error rate is 100.0%. Recommended action If the site error rate is 100%: Using a web browser, attempt to access http://www.soobumimphotography.com//robots.txt. If you are able to access it from your browser, then your site may be configured to deny access to googlebot. Check the configuration of your firewall and site to ensure that you are not denying access to googlebot. If your robots.txt is a static page, verify that your web service has proper permissions to access the file. If your robots.txt is dynamically generated, verify that the scripts that generate the robots.txt are properly configured and have permission to run. Check the logs for your website to see if your scripts are failing, and if so attempt to diagnose the cause of the failure. If the site error rate is less than 100%: Using Webmaster Tools, find a day with a high error rate and examine the logs for your web server for that day. Look for errors accessing robots.txt in the logs for that day and fix the causes of those errors. The most likely explanation is that your site is overloaded. Contact your hosting provider and discuss reconfiguring your web server or adding more resources to your website. After you think you've fixed the problem, use Fetch as Google to fetch http://www.soobumimphotography.com//robots.txt to verify that Googlebot can properly access your site.
Technical SEO | | BistosAmerica0 -
Does Bing ignore robots txt files?
Bonjour from "Its a miracle is not raining" Wetherby Uk 🙂 Ok here goes... Why despite a robots text file excluding indexing to site http://lewispr.netconstruct-preview.co.uk/ is the site url being indexed in Bing bit not Google? Does bing ignore robots text files or is there something missing from http://lewispr.netconstruct-preview.co.uk/robots.txt I need to add to stop bing indexing a preview site as illustrated below. http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/preview-bing-indexed.jpg Any insights welcome 🙂
Technical SEO | | Nightwing0 -
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