Robots.txt question
-
What is this robots.txt telling the search engines?
User-agent: * Disallow: /stats/
-
Oh - and it's affect the domain negatively.. when cleaning up your site directories via robots.txt. Its actually better as I explained below
-
Hey Mark,
It's good practice to disallow access to any folder/content you don't want indexed as well as anything that has any security involved (login's, databases etc).
It will also keep the most important pages from the domain in front of the search spiders eyes, while keeping poor content out of the indes. This helps the domain on a site authority level provide valuable content and information to users.
Lower ranking pages, can cause the domain to be pulled down by serarch engines (Google and Bing have attested to this already) as they want businesses to focus on high value content - which leads to better user experience.
Cheers!
-
Thanks- wanted to make sure all was copacetic there. I'm assuming that it's good practice to disallow access to stats and won't impact the site negatively?
-
Assuming that this is the entire contents of this file: It says that no robot (search engine spider, other crawler, etc.) should visit or index anything in the /stats/ directory or any directories inside of it.
More info available here: http://www.robotstxt.org/robotstxt.html
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 Webmaster Tools is saying "Sitemap contains urls which are blocked by robots.txt" after Https move...
Hi Everyone, I really don't see anything wrong with our robots.txt file after our https move that just happened, but Google says all URLs are blocked. The only change I know we need to make is changing the sitemap url to https. Anything you all see wrong with this robots.txt file? robots.txt This file is to prevent the crawling and indexing of certain parts of your site by web crawlers and spiders run by sites like Yahoo! and Google. By telling these "robots" where not to go on your site, you save bandwidth and server resources. This file will be ignored unless it is at the root of your host: Used: http://example.com/robots.txt Ignored: http://example.com/site/robots.txt For more information about the robots.txt standard, see: http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/robots.html For syntax checking, see: http://www.sxw.org.uk/computing/robots/check.html Website Sitemap Sitemap: http://www.bestpricenutrition.com/sitemap.xml Crawlers Setup User-agent: * Allowable Index Allow: /*?p=
Technical SEO | | vetofunk
Allow: /index.php/blog/
Allow: /catalog/seo_sitemap/category/ Directories Disallow: /404/
Disallow: /app/
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /downloader/
Disallow: /includes/
Disallow: /lib/
Disallow: /magento/
Disallow: /pkginfo/
Disallow: /report/
Disallow: /stats/
Disallow: /var/ Paths (clean URLs) Disallow: /index.php/
Disallow: /catalog/product_compare/
Disallow: /catalog/category/view/
Disallow: /catalog/product/view/
Disallow: /catalogsearch/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /control/
Disallow: /contacts/
Disallow: /customer/
Disallow: /customize/
Disallow: /newsletter/
Disallow: /poll/
Disallow: /review/
Disallow: /sendfriend/
Disallow: /tag/
Disallow: /wishlist/
Disallow: /aitmanufacturers/index/view/
Disallow: /blog/tag/
Disallow: /advancedreviews/abuse/reportajax/
Disallow: /advancedreviews/ajaxproduct/
Disallow: /advancedreviews/proscons/checkbyproscons/
Disallow: /catalog/product/gallery/
Disallow: /productquestions/index/ajaxform/ Files Disallow: /cron.php
Disallow: /cron.sh
Disallow: /error_log
Disallow: /install.php
Disallow: /LICENSE.html
Disallow: /LICENSE.txt
Disallow: /LICENSE_AFL.txt
Disallow: /STATUS.txt Paths (no clean URLs) Disallow: /.php$
Disallow: /?SID=
disallow: /?cat=
disallow: /?price=
disallow: /?flavor=
disallow: /?dir=
disallow: /?mode=
disallow: /?list=
disallow: /?limit=5
disallow: /?limit=10
disallow: /?limit=15
disallow: /?limit=20
disallow: /*?limit=250 -
What are the negative implications of listing URLs in a sitemap that are then blocked in the robots.txt?
In running a crawl of a client's site I can see several URLs listed in the sitemap that are then blocked in the robots.txt file. Other than perhaps using up crawl budget, are there any other negative implications?
Technical SEO | | richdan0 -
Robots.txt blocking Addon Domains
I have this site as my primary domain: http://www.libertyresourcedirectory.com/ I don't want to give spiders access to the site at all so I tried to do a simple Disallow: / in the robots.txt. As a test I tried to crawl it with Screaming Frog afterwards and it didn't do anything. (Excellent.) However, there's a problem. In GWT, I got an alert that Google couldn't crawl ANY of my sites because of robots.txt issues. Changing the robots.txt on my primary domain, changed it for ALL my addon domains. (Ex. http://ethanglover.biz/ ) From a directory point of view, this makes sense, from a spider point of view, it doesn't. As a solution, I changed the robots.txt file back and added a robots meta tag to the primary domain. (noindex, nofollow). But this doesn't seem to be having any effect. As I understand it, the robots.txt takes priority. How can I separate all this out to allow domains to have different rules? I've tried uploading a separate robots.txt to the addon domain folders, but it's completely ignored. Even going to ethanglover.biz/robots.txt gave me the primary domain version of the file. (SERIOUSLY! I've tested this 100 times in many ways.) Has anyone experienced this? Am I in the twilight zone? Any known fixes? Thanks. Proof I'm not crazy in attached video. robotstxt_addon_domain.mp4
Technical SEO | | eglove0 -
Do I have a robots.txt problem?
I have the little yellow exclamation point under my robots.txt fetch as you can see here- http://imgur.com/wuWdtvO This version shows no errors or warnings- http://imgur.com/uqbmbug Under the tester I can currently see the latest version. This site hasn't changed URLs recently, and we haven't made any changes to the robots.txt file for two years. This problem just started in the last month. Should I worry?
Technical SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
Question about keywords on multiple pages
Hello all great to be apart of this community, My question is: I am trying to rank for two separate "two keyword" searches which are "BBB boost" and "ZZZ boost" I am planning to put "ZZZ boost" on my homepage/landing, and "BBB boost" on my second page where the end user actually purchases said product. "ZZZ boost" - receives around 22,000 monthly searches and "BBB boost" - around 5000 monthly searches Because each of these share the one keyword "boost" in them, will it affect my ability to rank for even one page on the "two keyword" phrase? Or will it cause both pages to come up in the google search results on either "two keyword" phrase because they share the same word "boost" in them? If so does that affect the ability to rank 1 page since they share the same domain name, will it divide page ranking/serp ranking?
Technical SEO | | zerk890 -
One simply question about disavow tool
Hi Guys, my website is under a negative seo attack. One simply question about disavow tools. Everyday I have to upload a file with the new bad backlinks (domains). The fact is that when I try to upload a new disavow report the tool continue to show me the file of the day before and If I upload the new file it replace the old one. So.... what I have to do? 1. Upload a new file with the backlink domain of the day that replace the old one
Technical SEO | | Italianseolover
2. Or upload a new file with the old backlinks plus the new one? Thank you very much.0 -
Blocked URL's by robots.txt
In Google Webmaster Tools shows me 10,936 Blocked URL's by robots.txt and it is very strange when you go to the "Index Status" section where shows that since April 2012 robots.txt blocked many URL's. You can see more precise on the image attached (chart WMT) I can not explain why I have blocked URL's ? because I have nothing in robots.txt.
Technical SEO | | meralucian37
My robots.txt is like this: User-agent: * I thought I was penalized by Penguin in April 2012 because constantly i'am losing visitors now reaching over 40%. It may be a different penalty? Any help is welcome because i'm already so saturated. Mera robotstxt.jpg0 -
Allow or Disallow First in Robots.txt
If I want to override a Disallow directive in robots.txt with an Allow command, do I have the Allow command before or after the Disallow command? example: Allow: /models/ford///page* Disallow: /models////page
Technical SEO | | irvingw0