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.
Google Search console says 'sitemap is blocked by robots?
-
Google Search console is telling me "Sitemap contains URLs which are blocked by robots.txt."
I don't understand why my sitemap is being blocked? My robots.txt look like this:
User-Agent: *
Disallow:It's a WordPress site, with Yoast SEO installed. Is anyone else having this issue with Google Search console? Does anyone know how I can fix this issue?
-
Nice happy to hear that do you work with Greg Reindel? He is a good friend I looked at your IP that is why I ask?
Tom
-
I agree with David
Hey is your dev Greg Reindel? If so you can call me for help PM me here for my info.
Thomas Zickell
-
Hey guys, I ended up disabling the sitemap option from YoastSEO, then installed the 'Google (XML) sitemap' plug-in. I re-submitted the sitemap to Google last night, and it came back with no issues. I'm glad to finally have this sorted out.
Thanks for all the help!
-
Hi Christian,
The current robots.txt shouldn't be blocking those URLs.
Did you or someone else recently change the robots.txt file? If so, give Google a few days to re-crawl your site.
Also, can you check what happens when you do a fetch and render on one of the blocked posts in Search Console? Do you have issues there?
Cheers,
David
-
I think you need to make an https robots.txt file if you are running https if running https
https://moz.com/blog/xml-sitemaps
`User-agent: * Disallow: /wp-admin/ Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php` Sitemap: https://domain.com/index-sitemap.xml(that is a https site map)can you send the sitemap URL or run it though deepcrawl
Hope this helps?
Did you make a new robots.txt file?
-
Thanks for the response. Do you think this is a robots.txt issue? Or could this be caused by the YoastSEO plugin?
Do you know if this plug-in works with YoastSEO together? Or will it cause issues?
-
Thank you for the response.
I just scanned the site using 'Screaming frog'. Under Internal>Directives there were zero 'no index' links. I also check for '404 errors', server 505 errors, or anything 'blocked by robots.txt'.
Google search console is still showing me that there are URL's being blocked by my sitemap. (I added a screenshot of this). When I click through, it tells me that the 'post sitemap' has over +300 warnings.
I have just deleted the YoastSEO plugin, and I am now re-installing it. hopefully, this fixes the issue.
-
No, you do not need to change or plug-in what is happening is Webmaster tools is telling you that you have no index or no follow were robots xTag somewhere on your URLs inside your sitemap.
Run your site through Moz, screaming frog Seo spider or deepcrawl and look for no indexed URLs.
webmaster tools/search console is telling you that you have no index URLs inside of your XML sitemap not that you robots.txt is blocking it. This would be set in the Yoast plugin. one way to correct it is to look for noindex URLs & filter them inside Yoast so they are not being presented to the crawlers.
If you would like you can turn off the sitemap on Yoast and turn it back on if that does not work I recommend completely removing the plug-in and reinstalling it
- https://kb.yoast.com/kb/how-can-i-uninstall-my-plugin/
- https://kinsta.com/blog/uninstall-wordpress-plugin/
Can you send a screenshot of what you're seeing?
When you see it in Google Webmaster tools are you talking about the XML sitemap itself mean no indexed because all XML sitemaps are no indexed.
Please add this to your robots.txt
`User-agent:* Disallow:/wp-admin/ Allow:/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php` Sitemap: http://www.website.com/sitemap_index.xmlI hope this is of help,
Tom
-
Hi,
Use this plugin
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-robots-txt/
it will remove previous robots.txt and set simple wordpress robots.txt and wait for a day
problem can be solved.
Also watch this video on the same @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZiyN07bbBM
Thanks
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
-
Google Search Console Showing 404 errors for product pages not in sitemap?
We have some products with url changes over the past several months. Google is showing these as having 404 errors even though they are not in sitemap (sitemap shows the correct NEW url). Is this expected? Will these errors eventually go away/stop being monitored by Google?
Technical SEO | | woshea0 -
Google has deindexed a page it thinks is set to 'noindex', but is in fact still set to 'index'
A page on our WordPress powered website has had an error message thrown up in GSC to say it is included in the sitemap but set to 'noindex'. The page has also been removed from Google's search results. Page is https://www.onlinemortgageadvisor.co.uk/bad-credit-mortgages/how-to-get-a-mortgage-with-bad-credit/ Looking at the page code, plus using Screaming Frog and Ahrefs crawlers, the page is very clearly still set to 'index'. The SEO plugin we use has not been changed to 'noindex' the page. I have asked for it to be reindexed via GSC but I'm concerned why Google thinks this page was asked to be noindexed. Can anyone help with this one? Has anyone seen this before, been hit with this recently, got any advice...?
Technical SEO | | d.bird0 -
Discrepancy in actual indexed pages vs search console
Hi support, I checked my search console. It said that 8344 pages from www.printcious.com/au/sitemap.xml are indexed by google. however, if i search for site:www.printcious.com/au it only returned me 79 results. See http://imgur.com/a/FUOY2 https://www.google.com/search?num=100&safe=off&biw=1366&bih=638&q=site%3Awww.printcious.com%2Fau&oq=site%3Awww.printcious.com%2Fau&gs_l=serp.3...109843.110225.0.110430.4.4.0.0.0.0.102.275.1j2.3.0....0...1c.1.64.serp..1.0.0.htlbSGrS8p8 Could you please advise why there is discrepancy? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Printcious0 -
Robots.txt & meta noindex--site still shows up on Google Search
I have set up my robots.txt like this: User-agent: *
Technical SEO | | RoxBrock
Disallow: / and I have this meta tag in my on a Wordpress site, set up with SEO Yoast name="robots" content="noindex,follow"/> I did "Fetch as Google" on my Google Search Console My website is still showing up in the search results and it says this: "A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt" This site has not shown up for years and now it is ranking above my site that I want to rank for this keyword. How do I get Google to ignore this site? This seems really weird and I'm confused how a site with little content, that has not been updated for years can rank higher than a site that is constantly updated and improved.1 -
I added a WP Customer Reviews plugin but nothing seems to appear on Google search
Hi, I've added the wordpress Wp Customer Reviews plugin to a my client's website and we brought some past clients to put on reviews in order to empower the hReview factor. Google as scraped the website several times since but we don't see any change in the organic serp. Can you please tell me if I've done something wrong or I forgot something? That's the website - Capital Garage Door Thanks!
Technical SEO | | captainjoe0 -
Blocking Affiliate Links via robots.txt
Hi, I work with a client who has a large affiliate network pointing to their domain which is a large part of their inbound marketing strategy. All of these links point to a subdomain of affiliates.example.com, which then redirects the links through a 301 redirect to the relevant target page for the link. These links have been showing up in Webmaster Tools as top linking domains and also in the latest downloaded links reports. To follow guidelines and ensure that these links aren't counted by Google for either positive or negative impact on the site, we have added a block on the robots.txt of the affiliates.example.com subdomain, blocking search engines from crawling the full subddomain. The robots.txt file is the following code: User-agent: * Disallow: / We have authenticated the subdomain with Google Webmaster Tools and made certain that Google can reach and read the robots.txt file. We know they are being blocked from reading the affiliates subdomain. However, we added this affiliates subdomain block a few weeks ago to the robots.txt, but links are still showing up in the latest downloads report as first being discovered after we added the block. It's been a few weeks already, and we want to make sure that the block was implemented properly and that these links aren't being used to negatively impact the site. Any suggestions or clarification would be helpful - if the subdomain is being blocked for the search engines, why are the search engines following the links and reporting them in the www.example.com subdomain GWMT account as latest links. And if the block is implemented properly, will the total number of links pointing to our site as reported in the links to your site section be reduced, or does this not have an impact on that figure?From a development standpoint, it's a much easier fix for us to adjust the robots.txt file than to change the affiliate linking connection from a 301 to a 302, which is why we decided to go with this option.Any help you can offer will be greatly appreciated.Thanks,Mark
Technical SEO | | Mark_Ginsberg0 -
Will an XML sitemap override a robots.txt
I have a client that has a robots.txt file that is blocking an entire subdomain, entirely by accident. Their original solution, not realizing the robots.txt error, was to submit an xml sitemap to get their pages indexed. I did not think this tactic would work, as the robots.txt would take precedent over the xmls sitemap. But it worked... I have no explanation as to how or why. Does anyone have an answer to this? or any experience with a website that has had a clear Disallow: / for months , that somehow has pages in the index?
Technical SEO | | KCBackofen0 -
Why am I not showing up in the SERP's or Google Local?
I have been trying to optimise the following site for both Google SERP's and Google Local - Pixel Primate The URL has been around for around 3 years now but they just updated the website and launched it in December 2012. I did the on-page optimisation early in January 2013 and Google seems to have indexed the changes, for the home page at least. One major keyword I am targeting for the home page is 'Web Design Leicester'. I understand that the DA is fairly low (24) so this is something I need to improve. However, I've experienced positive results fairly quickly from just on-page optimisation for other sites I have worked on. The site just doesn't seem to be ranking at all for any keywords. Maybe the industry type is just extremely competitve but I find it very strange to not be visible anywhere in the SERPs. The site does not seem to have any penalties as it ranks for 'Pixel Primate' and all pages appear when doing a site: search. Also what's strange is that I set up the Google Local listing years ago but it doesn't appear anywhere in the local listing, not even when I search for it manually. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | CWseo0