Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Technical SEO
    4. Google indexing despite robots.txt block

    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.

    Google indexing despite robots.txt block

    Technical SEO
    5
    11
    2623
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • zeepartner
      zeepartner last edited by

      Hi

      This subdomain has about 4'000 URLs indexed in Google, although it's blocked via robots.txt: https://www.google.com/search?safe=off&q=site%3Awww1.swisscom.ch&oq=site%3Awww1.swisscom.ch

      This has been the case for almost a year now, and it does not look like Google tends to respect the blocking in http://www1.swisscom.ch/robots.txt

      Any clues why this is or what I could do to resolve it?

      Thanks!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • john4math
        john4math last edited by

        It sounds like Martijn solved your problem, but I still wanted to add that robots.txt exclusions keep search bots from reading pages that are disallowed, but it does not stop those pages from being returned in search results.  When those pages do appear, a lot of times they'll have a page description along the lines of "A description of this page is not available due to this sites robots.txt".

        If you want to ensure that pages are kept out of search engines results, you have to use the noindex meta tag on each page.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • zeepartner
          zeepartner @Martijn_Scheijbeler last edited by

          Yes, I think the crucial point is that addressing googlebot wouldn't resolve the specific problem I have here.

          I would have tried adressing googlebot otherwise. But to be honest, I wouldn't have expected a much different result than specifying all user agents. Googlebot should be part of that exclusion in any case.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Martijn_Scheijbeler
            Martijn_Scheijbeler @Kingof5 last edited by

            I thought that value was a bit outdated, turns out to be still accepted. Although it probably only address this issue for him in Google and I assume it will still remain one in other search engines.

            Besides that the problem offered a way better solution in allowing Google not on the HTTPS site.

            zeepartner 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • Kingof5
              Kingof5 @Martijn_Scheijbeler last edited by

              Specifically for Googlebot. I'm pretty surprised people would disagree - Stephan Spencer recommended this in a personal conversation with me.

              Martijn_Scheijbeler 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • Martijn_Scheijbeler
                Martijn_Scheijbeler @Kingof5 last edited by

                Did you mean a noindex tags for robots or a specific one for googlebot? With the second one I probably get the downvotes.

                Kingof5 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • Kingof5
                  Kingof5 @Kingof5 last edited by

                  People who are disagreeing with this, explain your reasoning.

                  Martijn_Scheijbeler 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • Kingof5
                    Kingof5 last edited by

                    A noindex tag specific to Googlebot would also be a good idea.

                    Kingof5 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote -3
                    • Martijn_Scheijbeler
                      Martijn_Scheijbeler @zeepartner last edited by

                      You're welcome, it was mostly due to noticing that the first snippet, the homepage, had no snippet and the rest of the pages did have one. That led me to looking at their URL structure. Good luck fixing it!

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                      • zeepartner
                        zeepartner @Martijn_Scheijbeler last edited by

                        100 points for you Martijn, thanks! I'm pretty sure you've found the problem and I'll go about fixing it. Gotta get used to having https used more frequently now...

                        Martijn_Scheijbeler 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                        • Martijn_Scheijbeler
                          Martijn_Scheijbeler last edited by

                          Hi Phillipp,

                          You almost got me with this one, but it's fairly simple. In your question you're pointing at the robots.txt of your HTTP page. But it's mostly your HTTP**S **pages that are indexed and if you look at that robots.txt file it's pretty clear why these pages are indexed: https://www1.swisscom.ch/robots.txt all the pages that are indexed match with one of your Allow statements are the complete Disallow. Hopefully that provides you with the insight on how to fix your issue.

                          zeepartner 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 4
                          • 1 / 1
                          • First post
                            Last post

                          Got a burning SEO question?

                          Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                          Start my free trial


                          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.

                          • See all categories

                          Related Questions

                          • TheHecksler

                            Google tries to index non existing language URLs. Why?

                            Hi, I am working for a SAAS client. He uses two different language versions by using two different subdomains.
                            de.domain.com/company for german and en.domain.com for english. Many thousands URLs has been indexed correctly. But Google Search Console tries to index URLs which were never existing before and are still not existing. de.domain.com**/en/company
                            en.domain.com
                            /de/**company ... and an thousand more using the /en/ or /de/ in between. We never use this variant and calling these URLs will throw up a 404 Page correctly (but with wrong respond code  -  we`re fixing that 😉 ). But Google tries to index these kind of URLs again and again. And, I couldnt find any source of these URLs. No Website is using this as an out going link, etc.
                            We do see in our logfiles, that a Screaming Frog Installation and moz.com w opensiteexplorer were trying to access this earlier. My Question: How does Google comes up with that? From where did they get these URLs, that (to our knowledge) never existed? Any ideas? Thanks 🙂

                            Technical SEO | | TheHecksler
                            0
                          • Tom3_15

                            Google is indexing bad URLS

                            Hi All, The site I am working on is built on Wordpress. The plugin Revolution Slider was downloaded. While no longer utilized, it still remained on the site for some time. This plugin began creating hundreds of URLs containing nothing but code on the page. I noticed these URLs were being indexed by Google. The URLs follow the structure: www.mysite.com/wp-content/uploads/revslider/templates/this-part-changes/ I have done the following to prevent these URLs from being created & indexed: 1. Added a directive in my Htaccess to 404 all of these URLs 2. Blocked /wp-content/uploads/revslider/ in my robots.txt 3. Manually de-inedex each URL using the GSC tool 4. Deleted the plugin However, new URLs still appear in Google's index, despite being blocked by robots.txt and resolving to a 404. Can anyone suggest any next steps? I Thanks!

                            Technical SEO | | Tom3_15
                            0
                          • Kilgray

                            How long does Google takes to re-index title tags?

                            Hi, We have carried out changes in our website title tags. However, when I search for these pages on Google, I still see the old title tags in the search results. Is there any way to speed this process up? Thanks

                            Technical SEO | | Kilgray
                            0
                          • kcb8178

                            Is there a limit to how many URLs you can put in a robots.txt file?

                            We have a site that has way too many urls caused by our crawlable faceted navigation.  We are trying to purge 90% of our urls from the indexes.  We put no index tags on the url combinations that we do no want indexed anymore, but it is taking google way too long to find the no index tags.  Meanwhile we are getting hit with excessive url warnings and have been it by Panda. Would it help speed the process of purging urls if we added the urls to the robots.txt file?  Could this cause any issues for us?  Could it have the opposite effect and block the crawler from finding the urls, but not purge them from the index? The list could be in excess of 100MM urls.

                            Technical SEO | | kcb8178
                            0
                          • rhoadesjohn

                            How to Stop Google from Indexing Old Pages

                            We moved from a .php site to a java site on April 10th.  It's almost 2 months later and Google continues to crawl old pages that no longer exist (225,430 Not Found Errors to be exact). These pages no longer exist on the site and there are no internal or external links pointing to these pages. Google has crawled the site since the go live, but continues to try and crawl these pages. What are my next steps?

                            Technical SEO | | rhoadesjohn
                            0
                          • JohnHuynh

                            How to remove all sandbox test site link indexed by google?

                            When develop site, I have a test domain is sandbox.abc.com, this site contents are same as abc.com. But, now I search site:sandbox.abc.com and aware of content duplicate with main site abc.com My question is how to remove all this link from goolge. p/s: I have just add robots.txt to sandbox and disallow all pages. Thanks,

                            Technical SEO | | JohnHuynh
                            0
                          • anand2010

                            How to remove a sub domain from Google Index!

                            Hello, I have a website having many subdomains having same copy of content i think its harming my SEO for that site since abc and xyz sub domains do have same contents. Thus i require to know i have already deleted required subdomain DNS RECORDS now how to have those pages removed from Google index as  well ? The DNS Records no more exists for those subdomains already.

                            Technical SEO | | anand2010
                            0
                          • nicole.healthline

                            Is blocking RSS Feeds with robots.txt necessary?

                            Is it necessary to block an rss feed with robots.txt? It seems they are automatically not indexed (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/12/taking-feeds-out-of-our-web-search.html) And, google says here that it's important not to block RSS feeds (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/10/using-rssatom-feeds-to-discover-new.html) I'm just checking!

                            Technical SEO | | nicole.healthline
                            0

                          Get started with Moz Pro!

                          Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                          Start my free trial
                          Products
                          • Moz Pro
                          • Moz Local
                          • Moz API
                          • Moz Data
                          • STAT
                          • Product Updates
                          Moz Solutions
                          • SMB Solutions
                          • Agency Solutions
                          • Enterprise Solutions
                          Free SEO Tools
                          • Domain Authority Checker
                          • Link Explorer
                          • Keyword Explorer
                          • Competitive Research
                          • Brand Authority Checker
                          • Local Citation Checker
                          • MozBar Extension
                          • MozCast
                          Resources
                          • Blog
                          • SEO Learning Center
                          • Help Hub
                          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                          • How-to Guides
                          • Moz Academy
                          • API Docs
                          About Moz
                          • About
                          • Team
                          • Careers
                          • Contact
                          Why Moz
                          • Case Studies
                          • Testimonials
                          Get Involved
                          • Become an Affiliate
                          • MozCon
                          • Webinars
                          • Practical Marketer Series
                          • MozPod
                          Connect with us

                          Contact the Help team

                          Join our newsletter
                          Moz logo
                          © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                          • Accessibility
                          • Terms of Use
                          • Privacy

                          Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.