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 blocking Moz
-
Moz are reporting the robots.txt file is blocking them from crawling one of our websites.
But as far as we can see this file is exactly the same as the robots.txt files on other websites that Moz is crawling without problems.
We have never come up against this before, even with this site.
Our stats show Rogerbot attempting to crawl our site, but it receives a 404 error.
Can anyone enlighten us to the problem please?
http://www.wychwoodflooring.com
-Christina
-
Hi Nigel
Neither, they use server side filtering.Regards- David
-
Hi David
That's great news!
As a matter of interest, where did they block it? as it's not in the Robots.txt - was in in htaccess.txt?
Regards
Nigel
-
Nigel,Thanks for the reply, the cgi-bin folder is never used by any of my sites but I put this in just as a matter of course, the folder would normally contain old cgi scripts so would not usually affect the crawling of a robot in any case.The reason for the problem turns out that our host had blocked rogerbot along with several other malicious bots, they have now lifted this block and the site is able to be crawled.- David
-
Hi Christina
I don't know how your site is set up but I can see that for some reason you are blocking access to the cgi-bin
If that directory contains files that execute php or other permissions then that may well be your problem. It's the only directory you are blocking and since I haven't seen other Robots.tx blocking it, then I would hazard a guess that this is the root of your problem.
Robots.txt
User-agent: * Disallow: /cgi-bin/ Sitemap: http://www.wychwoodflooring.com/sitemap.xmlRegards
Nigel
-
Our hosting provider has banned Rogerbot as they see it as problematic!!!!
They are a great hosting provider so this is going to be a difficult one.
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
-
Unsolved Need Moz SEO Wordpress Plugin With API
Re: Moz WordPress Plugin? Hi guys,
Moz Pro | | mrezair
I need some Moz SEO Wordpress Plugins For my website working with Moz API. I've already found Moz DA-PA Checker plugin Moz DA-PA Checker But Need SEO Plugins too. Any Suggestion will be appreciated.0 -
Unsolved Rogerbot blocked by cloudflare and not display full user agent string.
Hi, We're trying to get MOZ to crawl our site, but when we Create Your Campaign we get the error:
Moz Pro | | BB_NPG
Ooops. Our crawlers are unable to access that URL - please check to make sure it is correct. If the issue persists, check out this article for further help. robot.txt is fine and we actually see cloudflare is blocking it with block fight mode. We've added in some rules to allow rogerbot but these seem to be getting ignored. If we use a robot.txt test tool (https://technicalseo.com/tools/robots-txt/) with rogerbot as the user agent this get through fine and we can see our rule has allowed it. When viewing the cloudflare activity log (attached) it seems the Create Your Campaign is trying to crawl the site with the user agent as simply set as rogerbot 1.2 but the robot.txt testing tool uses the full user agent string rogerbot/1.0 (http://moz.com/help/pro/what-is-rogerbot-, rogerbot-crawler+shiny@moz.com) albeit it's version 1.0. So seems as if cloudflare doesn't like the simple user agent. So is it correct the when MOZ is trying to crawl the site it uses the simple string of just rogerbot 1.2 now ? Thanks
Ben Cloudflare activity log, showing differences in user agent strings
2022-07-01_13-05-59.png0 -
Robots.txt file issues on Shopify server
We have repeated issues with one of our ecommerce sites not being crawled. We receive the following message: Our crawler was not able to access the robots.txt file on your site. This often occurs because of a server error from the robots.txt. Although this may have been caused by a temporary outage, we recommend making sure your robots.txt file is accessible and that your network and server are working correctly. Typically errors like this should be investigated and fixed by the site webmaster. Read our troubleshooting guide. Are you aware of an issue with robots.txt on the Shopify servers? It is happening at least twice a month so it is quite an issue.
Moz Pro | | A_Q0 -
Moz-Specific 404 Errors Jumped with URLs that don't exist
Hello, I'm going to try and be as specific as possible concerning this weird issue, but I'd rather not say specific info about the site unless you think it's pertinent. So to summarize, we have a website that's owned by a company that is a division of another company. For reference, we'll say that: OURSITE.com is owned by COMPANY1 which is owned by AGENCY1 This morning, we got about 7,000 new errors in MOZ only (these errors are not in Search Console) for URLs with the company name or the agency name at the end of the url. So, let's say one post is: OURSITE.com/the-article/ This morning we have an error in MOZ for URLs OURSITE.com/the-article/COMPANY1 OURSITE.com/the-article/AGENCY1 x 7000+ articles we have created. Every single post ever created is now an error in MOZ because of these two URL additions that seem to come out of nowhere. These URLs are not in our Sitemaps, they are not in Google... They simply don't exist and yet MOZ created an an error with them. Unless they exist and I don't see them. Obviously there's a link to each company and agency site on the site in the about us section, but that's it.
Moz Pro | | CJolicoeur0 -
Should I set blog category/tag pages as "noindex"? If so, how do I prevent "meta noindex" Moz crawl errors for those pages?
From what I can tell, SEO experts recommend setting blog category and tag pages (ie. "http://site.com/blog/tag/some-product") as "noindex, follow" in order to keep the page quality of indexable pages high. However, I just received a slew of critical crawl warnings from Moz for having these pages set to "noindex." Should the pages be indexed? If not, why am I receiving critical crawl warnings from Moz and how do I prevent this?
Moz Pro | | NichGunn0 -
Screaming frog, Xenu, Moz giving wrong results
Hello guys and gals, This is a very odd one, I've a client's website and most of the crawlers I'm using are giving me weird/ wrong results. For now lets focus on screaming frog, when I crawl the site it will list e.g. meta titles as missing (not all of them though), however going into the site the title is not missing, and Google seems to be indexing the site fine. The robots.txt are not affecting the site (I've also tried changing the user agent). The other odd thing is SF gives a 200 code but as a status tells me "connection refused" even though it's giving me data. I'm unable to share the clients site, has any one else seen this very odd issue? And solutions for it? Many thanks in advanced for any help,
Moz Pro | | GPainter0 -
Moz Pro vs. Moz Analytics
Beta version has been out for awhile. Curious to know what people think of Moz Analytics. Personally, I'm having a hard time making the switch from Pro to Moz Analytics because I'm so used to the navigation and layout of Pro. What does everyone else think of the new Moz Analytics? Advantages? Disadvantages?
Moz Pro | | EEE31
