Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Robots.txt: how to exclude sub-directories correctly?
-
Hello here,
I am trying to figure out the correct way to tell SEs to crawls this:
http://www.mysite.com/directory/
But not this:
http://www.mysite.com/directory/sub-directory/
or this:
http://www.mysite.com/directory/sub-directory2/sub-directory/...
But with the fact I have thousands of sub-directories with almost infinite combinations, I can't put the following definitions in a manageable way:
disallow: /directory/sub-directory/
disallow: /directory/sub-directory2/
disallow: /directory/sub-directory/sub-directory/
disallow: /directory/sub-directory2/subdirectory/
etc...
I would end up having thousands of definitions to disallow all the possible sub-directory combinations.
So, is the following way a correct, better and shorter way to define what I want above:
allow: /directory/$
disallow: /directory/*
Would the above work?
Any thoughts are very welcome! Thank you in advance.
Best,
Fab.
-
I mentioned both. You add a meta robots to noindex and remove from the sitemap.
-
But google is still free to index a link/page even if it is not included in xml sitemap.
-
Install Yoast Wordpress SEO plugin and use that to restrict what is indexed and what is allowed in a sitemap.
-
I am using wordpress, Enfold theme (themeforest).
I want some files to be accessed by google, but those should not be indexed.
Here is an example: http://prntscr.com/h8918o
I have currently blocked some JS directories/files using robots.txt (check screenshot)
But due to this I am not able to pass Mobile Friendly Test on Google: http://prntscr.com/h8925z (check screenshot)
Is its possible to allow access, but use a tag like noindex in the robots.txt file. Or is there any other way out.
-
Yes, everything looks good, Webmaster Tools gave me the expected results with the following directives:
allow: /directory/$
disallow: /directory/*
Which allows this URL:
http://www.mysite.com/directory/
But doesn't allow the following one:
http://www.mysite.com/directory/sub-directory2/...
This page also gives an update similar to mine:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/156449?hl=en
I think I am good! Thanks
-
Thank you Michael, it is my understanding then that my idea of doing this:
allow: /directory/$
disallow: /directory/*
Should work just fine. I will test it within Google Webmaster Tools, and let you know if any problems arise.
In the meantime if anyone else has more ideas about all this and can confirm me that would be great!
Thank you again.
-
I've always stuck to Disallow and followed -
"This is currently a bit awkward, as there is no "Allow" field. The easy way is to put all files to be disallowed into a separate directory, say "stuff", and leave the one file in the level above this directory:"
http://www.robotstxt.org/robotstxt.html
From https://developers.google.com/webmasters/control-crawl-index/docs/robots_txt this seems contradictory
|
/*
| equivalent to / | equivalent to / | Equivalent to "/" -- the trailing wildcard is ignored. |I think this post will be very useful for you - http://moz.com/community/q/allow-or-disallow-first-in-robots-txt
-
Thank you Michael,
Google and other SEs actually recognize the "allow:" command:
https://developers.google.com/webmasters/control-crawl-index/docs/robots_txt
The fact is: if I don't specify that, how can I be sure that the following single command:
disallow: /directory/*
Doesn't prevent SEs to spider the /directory/ index as I'd like to?
-
As long as you dont have directories somewhere in /* that you want indexed then I think that will work. There is no allow so you don't need the first line just
disallow: /directory/*
You can test out here- https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/156449?rd=1
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
-
How to find correct schema type
Dear Moz members, I m currently working on schema optimizations of my website casinobesty.com which review online casino websites. I have a doubt which schema itemReviewed type I have to use in the review pages. Currently I m using type as "Game" but I m not sure it is correct. "description": "",
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CongthanhThe
"itemReviewed": {
"@type": "Game",
"name": "LeoVegas Casino",
"url": "https://casinobesty.com/casino/leovegas-casino/"
}, Thank you1 -
Allowing correct crawlers for GeoIP Redirect
Hi All, I am working on an international site and we have started running into issues with crawlers successfully crawling the site. GeoIPEnable On Redirect one country RewriteEngine on
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | michaelpw
RewriteCond %{ENV:GEOIP_COUNTRY_CODE} ^US$
RewriteCond %{HTTP:X-Host} !.nexcesscdn.net$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.)$ https://us.website.com/ [R,L] The main reason for working on a hard GEOIP redirect would be that we are unable to show certain products in certain regions, the customer should not be given the option which is best practice. Can anyone advise? Thanking in advance.0 -
What does Disallow: /french-wines/?* actually do - robots.txt
Hello Mozzers - Just wondering what this robots.txt instruction means: Disallow: /french-wines/?* Does it stop Googlebot crawling and indexing URLs in that "French Wines" folder - specifically the URLs that include a question mark? Would it stop the crawling of deeper folders - e.g. /french-wines/rhone-region/ that include a question mark in their URL? I think this has been done to block URLs containing query strings. Thanks, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Disallow URLs ENDING with certain values in robots.txt?
Is there any way to disallow URLs ending in a certain value? For example, if I have the following product page URL: http://website.com/category/product1, and I want to disallow /category/product1/review, /category/product2/review, etc. without disallowing the product pages themselves, is there any shortcut to do this, or must I disallow each gallery page individually?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jmorehouse0 -
Different Header on Home Page vs Sub pages
Hello, I am an SEO/PPC manager for a company that does a medical detox. You can see the site in question here: http://opiates.com. My question is, I've never heard of it specifically being a problem to have a different header on the home page of the site than on the subpages, but I rarely see it either. Most sites, if i'm not mistaken, use a consistent header across most of the site. However, a person i'm working for now said that she has had other SEO's look at the site (above) and they always say that it is a big SEO problem to have a different header on the homepage than on the subpages. Any thoughts on this subject? I've never heard of this before. Thanks, Jesse
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Waismann0 -
Do you add 404 page into robot file or just add no index tag?
Hi, got different opinion on this so i wanted to double check with your comment is. We've got /404.html page and I was wondering if you would add this page to robot text so it wouldn't be indexed or would you just add no index tag? What would be the best approach? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rubix0 -
Directory and Classified Submissions
Are directory submissions and Classified Submissions still a good way to create backlinks? Or they are obsolete methods and should be discontinued?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KS__0 -
Blocking Dynamic URLs with Robots.txt
Background: My e-commerce site uses a lot of layered navigation and sorting links. While this is great for users, it ends up in a lot of URL variations of the same page being crawled by Google. For example, a standard category page: www.mysite.com/widgets.html ...which uses a "Price" layered navigation sidebar to filter products based on price also produces the following URLs which link to the same page: http://www.mysite.com/widgets.html?price=1%2C250 http://www.mysite.com/widgets.html?price=2%2C250 http://www.mysite.com/widgets.html?price=3%2C250 As there are literally thousands of these URL variations being indexed, so I'd like to use Robots.txt to disallow these variations. Question: Is this a wise thing to do? Or does Google take into account layered navigation links by default, and I don't need to worry. To implement, I was going to do the following in Robots.txt: User-agent: * Disallow: /*? Disallow: /*= ....which would prevent any dynamic URL with a '?" or '=' from being indexed. Is there a better way to do this, or is this a good solution? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndrewY1