Robots.txt
-
should I add anything else besides User-Agent: * to my robots.txt file?
-
Thanks for the explanation!
-
Thank you Ryan
-
Every section of your robots.txt file consists of declaring the agents the rules will apply to, and then the rules themselves.
In your file the User-Agent: * is the first part, where you are saying the following rules apply to every type of visitor. But if you only have that, and no actual rules, then you don't really need a robots.txt file. The "normal" file Jordan refers to in his answer is probably a good best practice, but isn't technically necessary.
-
Thank you Jordan
-
If I'm implementing just a "normal" robots.txt file I always put
User-agent: * Allow: /
But you can also list a directory that you don't want to be indexed like
Disallow: /downloads
So if you wanted your whole site to be indexed except for /downloads and /users I believe your robots.txt would look like
User-agent: *
Disallow: /downloads
Disallow: /users
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
-
What are the negative implications of listing URLs in a sitemap that are then blocked in the robots.txt?
In running a crawl of a client's site I can see several URLs listed in the sitemap that are then blocked in the robots.txt file. Other than perhaps using up crawl budget, are there any other negative implications?
Technical SEO | | richdan0 -
Blocked jquery in Robots.txt, Any SEO impact?
I've heard that Google is now indexing links and stuff available in javascript and jquery. My webmastertools is showing that some links are blocked in robots.txt of jquery. Sorry I'm not a developer or designer. I want to know is there any impact of this on my SEO? and also how can I unblock it for the robots? Check this screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/3VDWikC.png
Technical SEO | | hammadrafique0 -
Robots.txt anomaly
Hi, I'm monitoring a site thats had a new design relaunch and new robots.txt added. Over the period of a week (since launch) webmaster tools has shown a steadily increasing number of blocked urls (now at 14). In the robots.txt file though theres only 12 lines with the disallow command, could this be occurring because a line in the command could refer to more than one page/url ? They all look like single urls for example: Disallow: /wp-content/plugins
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence
Disallow: /wp-content/cache
Disallow: /wp-content/themes etc, etc And is it normal for webmaster tools reporting of robots.txt blocked urls to steadily increase in number over time, as opposed to being identified straight away ? Thanks in advance for any help/advice/clarity why this may be happening ? Cheers Dan0 -
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 -
Removal request for entire catalog. Can be done without blocking in robots?
Bunch of thin content (catalog) pages modified with "follow, noindex" few weeks ago. Site completely re-crawled and related cache shows that these pages were not indexed again. So it's good I suppose 🙂 But all of them are still in main Google index and shows up from time to time in SERPs. Will they eventually disappear or we need to submit removal request?Problem is we really don't want to add this pages into robots.txt (they are passing link juice down below to product pages)Thanks!
Technical SEO | | LocalLocal0 -
How to allow one directory in robots.txt
Hello, is there a way to allow a certain child directory in robots.txt but keep all others blocked? For instance, we've got external links pointing to /user/password/, but we're blocking everything under /user/. And there are too many /user/somethings/ to just block every one BUT /user/password/. I hope that makes sense... Thanks!
Technical SEO | | poolguy0 -
Robots.txt
Hi everyone, I just want to check something. If you have this entered into your robots.txt file: User-agent: *
Technical SEO | | PeterM22
Disallow: /fred/ This wouldn't block /fred-review/ from being crawled would it? Thanks0 -
Robots.txt Syntax
Does the order of the robots.txt syntax matter in SEO? For example (are there potential problems with this format): User-agent: * Sitemap: Disallow: /form.htm Allow: / Disallow: /cgnet_directory
Technical SEO | | RodrigoStockebrand0