612 : Page banned by error response for robots.txt

[ME5OTU]

Hi all,
I ran a crawl on my site https://www.drbillsukala.com.au   and received the following error  "612 : Page banned by error response for robots.txt."

Before anyone mentions it, yes, I have been through all the other threads but they did not help me resolve this issue.

I am able to view my robots.txt file in a browser https://www.drbillsukala.com.au/robots.txt. 
The permissions are set to 644 on the robots.txt file so it should be accessible
My Google Search Console does not show any issues with my robots.txt file
I am running my site through StackPath CDN but I'm not inclined to think that's the culprit

One thing I did find odd is that even though I put in my website with https protocol (I double checked), on the Moz spreadsheet it listed my site with http protocol.

I'd welcome any feedback you might have.  Thanks in advance for your help.
Kind regards

[tawnycase]

Hey there! Tawny from Moz's Help Team here.

After doing some quick searching, it looks like how you configure the rules for WAFs depends on what service you're using to host those firewalls. You may need to speak to their support team to ask how to configure things to allow our user-agents.

Sorry I can't be more help here! If you still have questions we can help with, feel free to reach out to us at help@moz.com and we'll do our best to assist you.

[anshu.srivastava]

Hi, I am having the same issue.

Can you please tell me how you have created rule in Web Application Firewall to allow user agents rogerbot and dotbot.

Thanks!!

[ME5OTU]

Hi Federico,

Thanks for the prompt.  Yes, this solution worked.  I'm hopeful that this thread helps others too because when I was troubleshooting the problem, the other threads were not helpful for my particular situation.

Cheers

[FedeEinhorn]

Hi, did the solution work?

[ME5OTU]

Hi Federico,

I think I have found the solution for this problem and am hopeful the crawl will be successful this time around.  Based on further digging and speaking to the team at StackPath CDN, I have done the following:

1. I added the following to my robots.txt file

User-agent: rogerbot
Disallow:

User-agent: dotbot
Disallow:

2. I added a custom robots.txt file in my CDN which includes the above and then created a rule in my Web Application Firewall which allows user agents rogerbot and dotbot.

I'll let you know if the crawl was successful or not.

Kind regards

[ME5OTU]

Thanks for your response Federico.  I have checked my robots.txt tester in my Google Search Console and it said "allowed."

Oddly, it also happened on another site of mine that I'm also running through StackPath CDN with a web application firewall in place. This makes me wonder if perhaps the CDN/WAF are the culprits (?).

I'll keep poking around to see what I find.
Cheers

[FedeEinhorn]

Seems like an issue with the Moz crawler, as the robots.txt has no issues and the site loads just fine.

If you already tested your robots.txt using the Google Webmaster Tools "robots.txt Tester" just to be sure, then you should contact Moz here: https://moz.com/help/contact/pro

Hope it helps.