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.
How to allow bots to crawl all but WP-content
-
Hello,
I would like my website to remain crawlable to bots, but to block my wp content and media. Does the following robots.txt work? I worry that the * user agent may conflict with the others.
User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/
Disallow: /wp-content/User-agent: GoogleBot
Allow: /User-agent: GoogleBot-Mobile
Allow: /User-agent: GoogleBot-Image
Allow: /User-agent: Bingbot
Allow: /User-agent: Slurp
Allow: / -
Thank you for the help, Gaston!
-
Yeap, with that you are allowing every file ending with that extension
-
Can I do so with:
Allow: *.jpg
Allow: *.png
-
Thanks, Gaston. I should have been more clear about what I am looking to do. I currently am having an indexation issue. Somehow, pages are being automatically generated by WordPress.
These pages are often .txt files of information or code from plugins, all beginning with /wp-content/uploads/ in their URL. I have been manually removing them from the index and would like to now have them be uncrawlable.
Best
-
Oh god, my mistake!
Im deeply sorry, yes, this configuration will block images! that follow that folder structure!I'll correct myself.
Thanks for pointing it out! -
Gaston,
Thanks for the fast reply! My images folder does follow that format, which is what makes me worrisome as we are blocking the wp-conent folder.
Thanks!
-
Hi Tom,
Yes, this config will allow images to be crawled,
No, this config will block images to be crawled,as long as your wordpress has the defalt folder for images: /wp-content/uploads/year/month/image-name.png
How to know, super easy, where your images are stored? Go to the web where you can find an image... Then right clic and then copy link address. With that link you will find that folder structure.
Hope it helps.
Best luck.
GR -
Hi Gaston,
I just wanted to follow up with you with one last question if possible. Would this allow my images and PDF's to be crawled & indexed still?
Thanks!
-
Awesome. Thanks, Gaston!
-
Yes it does.
As I said earlier. Copy and paste that code into the robot.txt tester in any of your search console and try with some name.css or testing.js just for testing.
Check the image i've attached.Hope it helps.
Best luck
GR -
Thank you for the response. I'm still a little uncertain, does the version you wrote allow the bots to crawl the css and js as well?
Best
-
Hi Tom!
That Robots.txt config is pretty redundant.
To acheive what you what, thy this:User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/
Disallow: /wp-content/
Allow: *.js
Allow: *.cssJust 3 things to note here:
1- That User-agent:* and those disallows blocks for every bot to crawl whats in those folders.
2- When blocking /wp-content/ you are also blocking the /themes/ folder and inside are the .js and .css files. Blocking those files cause to googlebot not being able to render correctly that page and see it different from what a normal user would see.
3- Those Allow:/ dont prevent the disallow.To try that configuration, you can use the robots.txt tester in search console, just inder the Crawl menu.
Remember that by default google considers that you are not blocking nothing.
More info here: The web robots.tat pageHope it helps.
Best luck.
GR
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
-
Duplicate Content and Subdirectories
Hi there and thank you in advance for your help! I'm seeking guidance on how to structure a resources directory (white papers, webinars, etc.) while avoiding duplicate content penalties. If you go to /resources on our site, there is filter function. If you filter for webinars, the URL becomes /resources/?type=webinar We didn't want that dynamic URL to be the primary URL for webinars, so we created a new page with the URL /resources/webinar that lists all of our webinars and includes a featured webinar up top. However, the same webinar titles now appear on the /resources page and the /resources/webinar page. Will that cause duplicate content issues? P.S. Not sure if it matters, but we also changed the URLs for the individual resource pages to include the resource type. For example, one of our webinar URLs is /resources/webinar/forecasting-your-revenue Thank you!
Technical SEO | | SAIM_Marketing0 -
What to do with old content after 301 redirect
I'm going through all our blog and FAQ pages to see which ones are performing well and which ones are competing with one another. Basically doing an SEO content clean up. Is there any SEO benefit to keeping the page published vs trashing it after you apply a 301 redirect to a better performing page?
Technical SEO | | LindsayE0 -
Content in Accordion doesn't rank as well as Content in Text box?
Does content rank better in a full view text layout, rather than in a clickable accordion? I read somewhere because users need to click into an accordion it may not rank as well, as it may be considered hidden on the page - is this true? accordion example: see features: https://www.workday.com/en-us/applications/student.html
Technical SEO | | DigitalCRO1 -
Duplicate content and 404 errors
I apologize in advance, but I am an SEO novice and my understanding of code is very limited. Moz has issued a lot (several hundred) of duplicate content and 404 error flags on the ecommerce site my company takes care of. For the duplicate content, some of the pages it says are duplicates don't even seem similar to me. additionally, a lot of them are static pages we embed images of size charts that we use as popups on item pages. it says these issues are high priority but how bad is this? Is this just an issue because if a page has similar content the engine spider won't know which one to index? also, what is the best way to handle these urls bringing back 404 errors? I should probably have a developer look at these issues but I wanted to ask the extremely knowledgeable Moz community before I do 🙂
Technical SEO | | AliMac260 -
Set Canonical for Paginated Content
Hi Guys, This is a follow up on this thread: http://moz.com/community/q/dynamic-url-parameters-woocommerce-create-404-errors# I would like to know how I can set a canonical link in Wordpress/Woocommerce which points to "View All" on category pages on our webshop.
Technical SEO | | jeeyer
The categories on my website can be viewed as 24/48 or All products but because the quanity constantly changes viewing 24 or 48 products isn't always possible. To point Google in the right direction I want to let them know that "View All" is the best way to go.
I've read that Google's crawler tries to do this automatically but not sure if this is the case on on my website. Here is some more info on the issue: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663744?hl=en
Thanks for the help! Joost0 -
Does Google know what footer content is?
We plan to do away with fixed footer content and make, for the most part, the content in the traditional footer area unique just like the 'main' part of the content. This begs the question, do Google know what is footer content as opposed to main on page content?
Technical SEO | | NeilD0 -
Duplicate content and http and https
Within my Moz crawl report, I have a ton of duplicate content caused by identical pages due to identical pages of http and https URL's. For example: http://www.bigcompany.com/accomodations https://www.bigcompany.com/accomodations The strange thing is that 99% of these URL's are not sensitive in nature and do not require any security features. No credit card information, booking, or carts. The web developer cannot explain where these extra URL's came from or provide any further information. Advice or suggestions are welcome! How do I solve this issue? THANKS MOZZERS
Technical SEO | | hawkvt10 -
Do search engines still index/crawl private content?
If you have a membership site, which requires a payment to access specific content/images/videos, do search engines still use that content as a ranking/domain authority factor? Is it worth optimizing these "private" pages for SEO?
Technical SEO | | christinarule1