XML Sitemap instruction in robots.txt = Worth doing?
-
Hi fellow SEO's,
Just a quick one, I was reading a few guides on Bing Webmaster tools and found that you can use the robots.txt file to point crawlers/bots to your XML sitemap (they don't look for it by default).
I was just wondering if it would be worth creating a robots.txt file purely for the purpose of pointing bots to the XML sitemap?
I've submitted it manually to Google and Bing webmaster tools but I was thinking more for the other bots (I.e. Mozbot, the SEOmoz bot?).
Any thoughts would be appreciated!
Regards,
Ash
-
Thanks for the answer and link John!
Regards,
Ash
-
I think it's worth it as it should only take a few minutes to set up, and it's good to have a robots.txt, even if it's allowing everything. Â Put a text file named "robots.txt" in your root directory with:
<code>User-agent: * Disallow: Sitemap: http://www.yourdomain.com/none-standard-location/sitemap.xml</code>Read more about robots.txt here:Â http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/robotstxt.
-
It is not going to make any difference. Time is better spend in fixing crawling & indexing issues of the website.
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
-
Pending Sitemaps
Hi, all Wondering if someone could give me a pointer or two, please. I cannot seem to get Google or Bing to crawl my sitemap. If I submit the sitemap in WMT and test it I get a report saying 44,322urls found. However, if I then submit that same sitemap it either says Pending (in old WMT) or Couldn't fetch in the new version. This couldn't fetch is very puzzling as it had no issue fetching the map to test it. My other domains on the same server are fine, the problem is limited to this one site. I have tried several pages on the site using the Fetch as Google tool and they load without issue, however, try as I may, it will not fetch my sitemap. The sitemapindex.xml file won't even submit. I can confirm my sitemaps, although large, work fine, please see the following as an example (minus the spaces, of course, didn't want to submit and make it look like I was just trying to get a link) https:// digitalcatwalk .co.uk/sitemap.xml https:// digitalcatwalk .co.uk/sitemapindex.xml I would welcome any feedback anyone could offer on this, please. It's driving me mad trying to work out what is up. Many thanks, Jeff
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wonkydogadmin0 -
Best sitemap generator that can automatically create and submit
I like screamingfrog but they don't automatically generate and submit to google. We use xml-sitemaps.org but they don't have all the functions and they crawl slow too. Can you recommend some good sitemap generator that is fast, with features and can automatically create and submit? Is inspyder good?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rbai0 -
Should I use meta noindex and robots.txt disallow?
Hi, we have an alternate "list view" version of every one of our search results pages The list view has its own URL, indicated by a URL parameter I'm concerned about wasting our crawl budget on all these list view pages, which effectively doubles the amount of pages that need crawling When they were first launched, I had the noindex meta tag be placed on all list view pages, but I'm concerned that they are still being crawled Should I therefore go ahead and also apply a robots.txt disallow on that parameter to ensure that no crawling occurs? Or, will Googlebot/Bingbot also stop crawling that page over time? I assume that noindex still means "crawl"... Thanks 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ntcma0 -
Robots.txt Question
For our company website faithology.com we are attempting to block out any urls that contain a ? mark to keep google from seeing some pages as duplicates. Our robots.txt is as follows: User-Agent: * Disallow: /*? User-agent: rogerbot Disallow: /community/ Is the above correct? We are wanting them to not crawl any url with a "?" inside, however we don't want to harm ourselves in seo. Thanks for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BMPIRE0 -
About robots.txt for resolve Duplicate content
I have a trouble with Duplicate content and title, i try to many way to resolve them but because of the web code so i am still in problem. I decide to use robots.txt to block contents that are duplicate. The first Question: How do i use command in robots.txt to block all of URL like this: http://vietnamfoodtour.com/foodcourses/Cooking-School/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | magician
http://vietnamfoodtour.com/foodcourses/Cooking-Class/ ....... User-agent: * Disallow: /foodcourses ( Is that right? ) And the parameter URL: h
ttp://vietnamfoodtour.com/?mod=vietnamfood&page=2
http://vietnamfoodtour.com/?mod=vietnamfood&page=3
http://vietnamfoodtour.com/?mod=vietnamfood&page=4 User-agent: * Disallow: /?mod=vietnamfood ( Is that right? i have folder contain module, could i use: disallow:/module/*) The 2nd question is: Which is the priority " robots.txt" or " meta robot"? If i use robots.txt to block URL, but in that URL my meta robot is "index, follow"0 -
Effect duration of robots.txt file.
in my web site there is demo site in that also, index in Google but no need it now.so i have created robots file and upload to server yesterday.in the demo folder there are some html files,and i wanna remove all these in demo file from Google.but still in web master tools it showing User-agent: *
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | innofidelity
Disallow: /demo/ How long this will take to remove from Google ? And are there any alternative way doing that ?0 -
Soft 404's from pages blocked by robots.txt -- cause for concern?
We're seeing soft 404 errors appear in our google webmaster tools section on pages that are blocked by robots.txt (our search result pages). Should we be concerned? Is there anything we can do about this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline4 -
Where to Include Mobile Version of Site in Sitemap
Hey All, I just did a mobile version of my site and was seeking some guidance on where to put it in the sitemap. Do i need an entirely new sitemap, or do i just add to my existing .xml Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JordanGreve0