Robots.txt Allowed
-
Hello all,
We want to block something that has the following at the end:
http://www.domain.com/category/product/some+demo+-text-+example--writing+here
So I was wondering if doing:
/*example--writing+here
would work?
-
Yes, that should work just fine. As Logan mentioned, I recommend you test it in the robots.txt testing tool in Google Search Console.
-
Yes, that would work. I'm sure everyone already knows that if in case you have a product that has the word example at the end of URL, it would block that too. A little off tangent here but blocking in robots.txt does not mean that every single spiders out there is going to honor this rule. The major ones like Google Spiders does honor this. Also, it doesn't mean that the URL won't be indexed. Sorry for the long winded answer but just make sure that if this is truly an example or demo page that you don't want search engines to index to make sure that you include "noindex, nofollow" in the metainfo.
I agree with Logan Ray. In case you want the "Robots TXT" Tester, you can google it "Robots Txt Tester" and the first one should be from support.google.com
-
Hi Thomas,
That should work. You can confirm this by modifying your robots.txt file in Search Console and testing a handful of URLs to ensure they're blocked the way you want.
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
-
Allowing Guest Posts on Website
I am planning to allow Guest posts on my website blog where authors or writers can post articles to my blog. All content will be manually approved by me. But i would like to know if guest posts will cause any harm to my site or is it good way to generate content. Another thing as guest posts will be having do-follow links & author section too will be up. So firstly i would like to know whether its a good step or not? Would even like to know what checks should i do before approving a guest posts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | welcomecure0 -
Robots Disallow Backslash - Is it right command
Bit skeptical, as due to dynamic url and some other linkage issue, google has crawled url with backslash and asterisk character ex - www.xyz.com/\/index.php?option=com_product www.xyz.com/\"/index.php?option=com_product Now %5c is the encoded version of \ - backslash & %22 is encoded version of asterisk Need to know for command :- User-agent: * Disallow: \As am disallowing all backslash url through this - will it only remove the backslash url which are duplicates or the entire site,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Modi0 -
Panda Updates - robots.txt or noindex?
Hi, I have a site that I believe has been impacted by the recent Panda updates. Assuming that Google has crawled and indexed several thousand pages that are essentially the same and the site has now passed the threshold to be picked out by the Panda update, what is the best way to proceed? Is it enough to block the pages from being crawled in the future using robots.txt, or would I need to remove the pages from the index using the meta noindex tag? Of course if I block the URLs with robots.txt then Googlebot won't be able to access the page in order to see the noindex tag. Anyone have and previous experiences of doing something similar? Thanks very much.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ianmcintosh0 -
How to Disallow Tag Pages With Robot.txt
Hi i have a site which i'm dealing with that has tag pages for instant - http://www.domain.com/news/?tag=choice How can i exclude these tag pages (about 20+ being crawled and indexed by the search engines with robot.txt Also sometimes they're created dynamically so i want something which automatically excludes tage pages from being crawled and indexed. Any suggestions? Cheers, Mark
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | monster990 -
Robots.txt file - How to block thosands of pages when you don't have a folder path
Hello.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Unity
Just wondering if anyone has come across this and can tell me if it worked or not. Goal:
To block review pages Challenge:
The URLs aren't constructed using folders, they look like this:
www.website.com/default.aspx?z=review&PG1234
www.website.com/default.aspx?z=review&PG1235
www.website.com/default.aspx?z=review&PG1236 So the first part of the URL is the same (i.e. /default.aspx?z=review) and the unique part comes immediately after - so not as a folder. Looking at Google recommendations they show examples for ways to block 'folder directories' and 'individual pages' only. Question:
If I add the following to the Robots.txt file will it block all review pages? User-agent: *
Disallow: /default.aspx?z=review Much thanks,
Davinia0 -
New server update + wrong robots.txt = lost SERP rankings
Over the weekend, we updated our store to a new server. Before the switch, we had a robots.txt file on the new server that disallowed its contents from being indexed (we didn't want duplicate pages from both old and new servers). When we finally made the switch, we somehow forgot to remove that robots.txt file, so the new pages weren't indexed. We quickly put our good robots.txt in place, and we submitted a request for a re-crawl of the site. The problem is that many of our search rankings have changed. We were ranking #2 for some keywords, and now we're not showing up at all. Is there anything we can do? Google Webmaster Tools says that the next crawl could take up to weeks! Any suggestions will be much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 9Studios0 -
Reciprocal Links and nofollow/noindex/robots.txt
Hypothetical Situations: You get a guest post on another blog and it offers a great link back to your website. You want to tell your readers about it, but linking the post will turn that link into a reciprocal link instead of a one way link, which presumably has more value. Should you nofollow your link to the guest post? My intuition here, and the answer that I expect, is that if it's good for users, the link belongs there, and as such there is no trouble with linking to the post. Is this the right way to think about it? Would grey hats agree? You're working for a small local business and you want to explore some reciprocal link opportunities with other companies in your niche using a "links" page you created on your domain. You decide to get sneaky and either noindex your links page, block the links page with robots.txt, or nofollow the links on the page. What is the best practice? My intuition here, and the answer that I expect, is that this would be a sneaky practice, and could lead to bad blood with the people you're exchanging links with. Would these tactics even be effective in turning a reciprocal link into a one-way link if you could overlook the potential immorality of the practice? Would grey hats agree?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AnthonyMangia0 -
Block all search results (dynamic) in robots.txt?
I know that google does not want to index "search result" pages for a lot of reasons (dup content, dynamic urls, blah blah). I recently optimized the entire IA of my sites to have search friendly urls, whcih includes search result pages. So, my search result pages changed from: /search?12345&productblue=true&id789 to /product/search/blue_widgets/womens/large As a result, google started indexing these pages thinking they were static (no opposition from me :)), but i started getting WMT messages saying they are finding a "high number of urls being indexed" on these sites. Should I just block them altogether, or let it work itself out?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rhutchings0