Invisible robots.txt?
-
So here's a weird one...
Client comes to me for some simple changes, turns out there are some major issues with the site, one of which is that none of the correct content pages are showing up in Google, just ancillary (outdated) ones. Looks like an issue because even the main homepage isn't showing up with a "site:domain.com"
So, I add to Webmaster Tools and, after an hour or so, I get the red bar of doom, "robots.txt is blocking important pages." I check it out in Webmasters and, sure enough, it's a "User agent: * Disallow /" ACK!
But wait... there's no robots.txt to be found on the server. I can go to domain.com/robots.txt and see it but nothing via FTP. I upload a new one and, thankfully, that is now showing but I've never seen that before.
Question is: can a robots.txt file be stored in a way that can't be seen?
Thanks!
-
Hi Josh
Did you ever find out how this was happening?
I've got the same issue with a wordpress site.. no robots.txt visible in FTP but it is accessible in a browser to view. -
I'm seeing the meta tag that's added for the first option:
<meta name="robots" content="index, follow" />
... but I could actually access a file at domain.com/robots.txt that had the content mentioned above. When I logged in via FTP, it wasn't there. I added an actual file there with the correct information and reloaded it to make sure it was showing the correct information.
I tested it on my local install and I'm not seeing a robots file being generated.
Very odd!
-
Yes, you probably answered your own question. In WordPress, there are two different settings under Settings > Privacy:
-
I would like my site visible to everyone, including search engines and archivers.
-
I would like to block search engines, but allow normal visitors
If option #2 was selected, WordPress doesn't create a robots.txt file for you but instead it automatically generates a tag on every single page.
I hope that helps!
-
-
Just make sure you don't set that Privacy setting in a live directory. It takes weeks/months to fully recover.
-
This is interesting. I am currently working on the robots.txt and testing it for different purposes. I also thought to do some test with wordpress websites as well so thanks for the update I’ll keep that in mind before actually testing different stuff.
Thanks!
-
I should mention that this is a WordPress site and, with that, I may have answered my own question. Perhaps WordPress generates a robots.txt dynamically when the setting is active at Settings > Privacy?
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 Indexing Development Site Despite Robots.txt Block
Hi, A development site that has been set-up has the following Robots.txt file: User-agent: * Disallow: / In an attempt to block Google indexing the site, however this isn't the case and the development site has since been indexed. Any clues why this is or what I could do to resolve it? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | CarlWint0 -
One server, two domains - robots.txt allow for one domain but not other?
Hello, I would like to create a single server with two domains pointing to it. Ex: domain1.com -> myserver.com/ domain2.com -> myserver.com/subfolder. The goal is to create two separate sites on one server. I would like the second domain ( /subfolder) to be fully indexed / SEO friendly and have the robots txt file allow search bots to crawl. However, the first domain (server root) I would like to keep non-indexed, and the robots.txt file disallowing any bots / indexing. Does anyone have any suggestions for the best way to tackle this one? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Dave1000 -
Robots.txt Question
In the past, I had blocked a section of my site (i.e. domain.com/store/) by placing the following in my robots.txt file: "Disallow: /store/" Now, I would like the store to be indexed and included in the search results. I have removed the "Disallow: /store/" from the robots.txt file, but approximately one week later a Google search for the URL produces the following meta description in the search results: "A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt – learn more" Is there anything else I need to do to speed up the process of getting this section of the site indexed?
Technical SEO | | davidangotti0 -
Should I block robots from URLs containing query strings?
I'm about to block off all URLs that have a query string using robots.txt. They're mostly URLs with coremetrics tags and other referrer info. I figured that search engines don't need to see these as they're always better off with the original URL. Might there be any downside to this that I need to consider? Appreciate your help / experiences on this one. Thanks Jenni
Technical SEO | | ShearingsGroup0 -
How ro write a robots txt file to point to your site map
Good afternoon from still wet & humid wetherby UK... I want to write a robots text file that instruct the bots to index everything and give a specific location to the sitemap. The sitemap url is:http://business.leedscityregion.gov.uk/CMSPages/GoogleSiteMap.aspx Is this correct: User-agent: *
Technical SEO | | Nightwing
Disallow:
SITEMAP: http://business.leedscityregion.gov.uk/CMSPages/GoogleSiteMap.aspx Any insight welcome 🙂0 -
Is there a reason to set a crawl-delay in the robots.txt?
I've recently encountered a site that has set a crawl-delay command set in their robots.txt file. I've never seen a need for this to be set since you can set that in Google Webmaster Tools for Googlebot. They have this command set for all crawlers, which seems odd to me. What are some reasons that someone would want to set it like that? I can't find any good information on it when researching.
Technical SEO | | MichaelWeisbaum0 -
OK to block /js/ folder using robots.txt?
I know Matt Cutts suggestions we allow bots to crawl css and javascript folders (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNEipHjsEPU) But what if you have lots and lots of JS and you dont want to waste precious crawl resources? Also, as we update and improve the javascript on our site, we iterate the version number ?v=1.1... 1.2... 1.3... etc. And the legacy versions show up in Google Webmaster Tools as 404s. For example: http://www.discoverafrica.com/js/global_functions.js?v=1.1
Technical SEO | | AndreVanKets
http://www.discoverafrica.com/js/jquery.cookie.js?v=1.1
http://www.discoverafrica.com/js/global.js?v=1.2
http://www.discoverafrica.com/js/jquery.validate.min.js?v=1.1
http://www.discoverafrica.com/js/json2.js?v=1.1 Wouldn't it just be easier to prevent Googlebot from crawling the js folder altogether? Isn't that what robots.txt was made for? Just to be clear - we are NOT doing any sneaky redirects or other dodgy javascript hacks. We're just trying to power our content and UX elegantly with javascript. What do you guys say: Obey Matt? Or run the javascript gauntlet?0 -
Severe rank drop due to overwritten robots.txt
Hi, Last week we made a change to drupal core for an update to our website. We accidentally overwrote our good robots.txt that blocked hundreds of pages with the default drupal robots.txt. Several hours after that happened (and we didn't catch the mistake) our rankings dropped from mostly first, second place in Google organic to bottom and mid first page. Basically I believe we flooded the index with very low quality pages at once and threw a red flag and we got de-ranked. We have since fixed the robots.txt and have been re-crawled but have not seen a return in rank. Would this be a safe assumption of what happened? I haven't seen any other sites getting hit in the retail vertical yet in regards to any Panda 2.3 type of update. Will we see a return in our results anytime soon? Thanks, Justin
Technical SEO | | BrettKrasnove0