Are robots.txt wildcards still valid? If so, what is the proper syntax for setting this up?
-
I've got several URL's that I need to disallow in my robots.txt file. For example, I've got several documents that I don't want indexed and filters that are getting flagged as duplicate content. Rather than typing in thousands of URL's I was hoping that wildcards were still valid.
-
Great job. I just wanted to add this from Google Webmasters
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/06/improving-on-robots-exclusion-protocol.html
and this from Google Developers
https://developers.google.com/webmasters/control-crawl-index/docs/robots_txt
-
Yup wildcard syntax is indeed still valid. However I can only confirm that the big 3 (Google, Yahoo and Bing) actively observe it. Other secondary search engines may not.
In your case you are probably looking for a syntax along the lines of:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /*.pdf$ This would set that any user agent should be blocked from any file name that ends in .pdf (a $ ties it to the end so pdf.txt would not be blocked in this case)Keep an eye on how you block them. Missing a trailing slash could block a directory rather than a file, or not appending a strict symbol ($) could mean that phrases throughout a directory could be blocked rather than just a filename.
Also keep in mind if you are using URL re-writing this may play into how you need to block things; and you may also want to remember that disallowing access in a robot.txt does NOT prevent search engines from indexing the data, it is up to them if they honor the request. So if it is very important to block the file access from search engines then robots.txt may not be the way 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
-
Can I still monitor noindex, nofollow pages with Google Analytics?
I have a private/login site where all pages are noindex, nofollow. Can I still monitor external site links with Google Analytics?
Technical SEO | | jasmine.silver0 -
If I get spammy backlinks removed is it still necessary to disavow?
Now there is some conflicting beliefs here and I want to know what you think. If I got a high spam website to remove my backlink, is a disavow through search console still necessary ? Keep in mind if it helps even in the slightest to improve rankings im for it!
Technical SEO | | Colemckeon1 -
Robots.txt | any SEO advantage to having one vs not having one?
Neither of my sites has a robots.txt file. I guess I have never been bothered by any particular bot enough to exclude it. Is there any SEO advantage to having one anyways?
Technical SEO | | GregB1230 -
Robots.txt and Magento
HI, I am working on getting my robots.txt up and running and I'm having lots of problems with the robots.txt my developers generated. www.plasticplace.com/robots.txt I ran the robots.txt through a syntax checking tool (http://www.sxw.org.uk/computing/robots/check.html) This is what the tool came back with: http://www.dcs.ed.ac.uk/cgi/sxw/parserobots.pl?site=plasticplace.com There seems to be many errors on the file. Additionally, I looked at our robots.txt in the WMT and they said the crawl was postponed because the robots.txt is inaccessible. What does that mean? A few questions: 1. Is there a need for all the lines of code that have the “#” before it? I don’t think it’s necessary but correct me if I'm wrong. 2. Furthermore, why are we blocking so many things on our website? The robots can’t get past anything that requires a password to access anyhow but again correct me if I'm wrong. 3. Is there a reason Why can't it just look like this: User-agent: * Disallow: /onepagecheckout/ Disallow: /checkout/cart/ I do understand that Magento has certain folders that you don't want crawled, but is this necessary and why are there so many errors?
Technical SEO | | EcomLkwd0 -
Crawl completed but still says meta description missing
Before the last crawl I went through and made sure all meta descriptions were not missing. However, from the last crawl on the 26th July, it still has the same pages on the list and showed they were crawled as well? Any ideas on why they may still be showing as missing?
Technical SEO | | HamiltonIsland0 -
Blocked by robots
my client GWT has a number of notices for "blocked by meta-robots" - these are all either blog posts/categories/or tags his former seo told him this: "We've activated following settings: Use noindex for Categories Use noindex for Archives Use noindex for Tag Archives to reduce keyword stuffing & duplicate post tags
Technical SEO | | Ezpro9
Disabling all 3 noindex settings above may remove google blocks but also will send too many similar tags, post archives/category. " is this guy correct? what would be the problem with indexing these? am i correct in thinking they should be indexed? thanks0 -
Best use of robots.txt for "garbage" links from Joomla!
I recently started out on Seomoz and is trying to make some cleanup according to the campaign report i received. One of my biggest gripes is the point of "Dublicate Page Content". Right now im having over 200 pages with dublicate page content. Now.. This is triggerede because Seomoz have snagged up auto generated links from my site. My site has a "send to freind" feature, and every time someone wants to send a article or a product to a friend via email a pop-up appears. Now it seems like the pop-up pages has been snagged by the seomoz spider,however these pages is something i would never want to index in Google. So i just want to get rid of them. Now to my question I guess the best solution is to make a general rule via robots.txt, so that these pages is not indexed and considered by google at all. But, how do i do this? what should my syntax be? A lof of the links looks like this, but has different id numbers according to the product that is being send: http://mywebshop.dk/index.php?option=com_redshop&view=send_friend&pid=39&tmpl=component&Itemid=167 I guess i need a rule that grabs the following and makes google ignore links that contains this: view=send_friend
Technical SEO | | teleman0 -
Google (GWT) says my homepage and posts are blocked by Robots.txt
I guys.. I have a very annoying issue.. My Wordpress-blog over at www.Trovatten.com has some indexation-problems.. Google Webmaster Tools data:
Technical SEO | | FrederikTrovatten22
GWT says the following: "Sitemap contains urls which are blocked by robots.txt." and shows me my homepage and my blogposts.. This is my Robots.txt: http://www.trovatten.com/robots.txt
"User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/ Do you have any idea why it says that the URL's are being blocked by robots.txt when that looks how it should?
I've read a couple of places that it can be because of a Wordpress Plugin that is creating a virtuel robots.txt, but I can't validate it.. 1. I have set WP-Privacy to crawl my site
2. I have deactivated all WP-plugins and I still get same GWT-Warnings. Looking forward to hear if you have an idea that might work!0