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 on http vs. https
-
We recently changed our domain from http to https. When a user enters any URL on http, there is an global 301 redirect to the same page on https.
I cannot find instructions about what to do with robots.txt. Now that https is the canonical version, should I block the http-Version with robots.txt?
Strangely, I cannot find a single ressource about this...
-
Glad to be of help. Check out this Google link to confirm you picked up the 180 day crawl
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/83106?hl=en
Second URLs helpful as well.
http://blog.raventools.com/moving-site-from-http-to-ssl/
all the best,
tom
-
Good point with the backlinks! Currently, both robots.txt files are open and google does not seem to have canonicalization problems so far. So it makes sense to leave it this way anyways... Thanks Thomas!
-
"Now that https is the canonical version, should I block the http-Version with robots.txt?"
Absolutely not GWT will handel all of it think about backlinks both https:// & http:// urls you will not want to lose the flow of link juice that you would cut off
Remake robost.txt with
http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/seo-tools/robots-txt-generator/
But use https:// for the xml sitemap.
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
-
Role of Robots.txt and Search Console parameters settings
Hi, wondering if anyone can point me to resources or explain the difference between these two. If a site has url parameters disallowed in Robots.txt is it redundant to edit settings in Search Console parameters to anything other than "Let Googlebot Decide"?
Technical SEO | | LivDetrick0 -
Robots.txt Tester - syntax not understood
I've looked in the robots.txt Tester and I can see 3 warnings: There is a 'syntax not understood' warning for each of these. XML Sitemaps:
Technical SEO | | JamesHancocks1
https://www.pkeducation.co.uk/post-sitemap.xml
https://www.pkeducation.co.uk/sitemap_index.xml How do I fix or reformat these to remove the warnings? Many thanks in advance.
Jim0 -
Root directory vs. subdirectories
Hello. How much more important does Google consider pages in the root directory relative to pages in a subdirectory? Is it best to keep the most important pages of a site in the root directory? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | nyc-seo0 -
Noindex vs. page removal - Panda recovery
I'm wondering whether there is a consensus within the SEO community as to whether noindexing pages vs. actually removing pages is different from Google Pandas perspective?Does noindexing pages have less value when removing poor quality content than physically removing ie. either 301ing or 404ing the page being removed and removing the links to it from the site? I presume that removing pages has a positive impact on the amount of link juice that gets to some of the remaining pages deeper into the site, but I also presume this doesn't have any direct impact on the Panda algorithm? Thanks very much in advance for your thoughts, and corrections on my assumptions 🙂
Technical SEO | | agencycentral0 -
Redirection plugin: wordpress vs apache module?
Hi, Any one familiar with the wordpress plugin 'redirection' Are there any SEO benefits of having the plugin write the 301 redirects into the .htaccess? The standard mode does not use .htaccess but has wordpress genertae the 301s Thanks
Technical SEO | | Justin10 -
Invisible robots.txt?
So here's a weird one... Client comes to me for some simple changes, turns out there are some major issues with the site, one of which is that none of the correct content pages are showing up in Google, just ancillary (outdated) ones. Looks like an issue because even the main homepage isn't showing up with a "site:domain.com" So, I add to Webmaster Tools and, after an hour or so, I get the red bar of doom, "robots.txt is blocking important pages." I check it out in Webmasters and, sure enough, it's a "User agent: * Disallow /" ACK! But wait... there's no robots.txt to be found on the server. I can go to domain.com/robots.txt and see it but nothing via FTP. I upload a new one and, thankfully, that is now showing but I've never seen that before. Question is: can a robots.txt file be stored in a way that can't be seen? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | joshcanhelp0 -
Robots.txt file getting a 500 error - is this a problem?
Hello all! While doing some routine health checks on a few of our client sites, I spotted that a new client of ours - who's website was not designed built by us - is returning a 500 internal server error when I try to look at the robots.txt file. As we don't host / maintain their site, I would have to go through their head office to get this changed, which isn't a problem but I just wanted to check whether this error will actually be having a negative effect on their site / whether there's a benefit to getting this changed? Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | themegroup0 -
301 Redirect vs Domain Alias
We have hundreds of domains which are either alternate spelling of our primary domain or close keyword names we didn't want our competitor to get before us. The primary domain is running on a dedicated Windows server running IIS6 and set to a static IP. Since it is a static IP and not using host headers any domain pointed to the static IP will immediately show the contents of the site, however the domain will be whatever was typed. Which could be the primary domain or an alias. Two concerns. First, is it possible that Google would penalize us for the alias domains or dilute our primary domain "juice"? Second, we need to properly track traffic from the alias domains. We could make unique content for those performing well and sell or let expire those that are sending no traffic. It's not my goal to use the alias domains to artificially pump up our primary domain. We have them for spelling errors and direct traffic. What is the best practice for handling one or both of these issues?
Technical SEO | | briankb0