Do I need robots.txt and meta robots?
-
If I can manage to tell crawlers what I do and don't want them to crawl for my whole site via my robots.txt file, do I still need meta robots instructions?
-
Older information, but mostly still relevant:
-
Although robots.txt and meta robots appear to do similar things, they both serve different functions.
Block with Robots.txt - This tells the engines to not crawl the given URL but tells them that they may keep the page in the index and display it in in results.
Block with Meta NoIndex - This tells engines they can visit but they are not allowed to display the URL in results. (this is a suggestion only - Google may still choose to show the URL)
Source: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/robotstxt
The disadvantage of robots.txt is that it blocks Google from crawling the page, meaning no link juice can flow through the page, and if Google discovers the URL through other means (external links) it may show the URL anyway in search results, usually without a meta description.
The advantage of robots.txt is it can improve crawl efficiency - useful if you find Google crawling a bunch of unnecessary pages and eating up your crawl allowance.
Most of the time, I only use robots.txt to solve problems that I can't solve at the page level. I usually prefer to keep pages out of the index using a meta NOINDEX, FOLLOW tag.
-
If you want the stub listing removed as well, this is quite straight forward once you have it blocked in Robots. Instructions here: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1663419
Just checking though: If the content you are trying to remove is something private that should be hidden (as opposed to just low value stuff that you don't want cluttering the SERPS) then this isn't the right way to go about it. If that is the case reply back.
-
Hello Mat,
As far as I know if I blocked a url using robots.txt.For that page I will get only url in serps but i want to remove url from serps also.How to do that?
-
In short, no. You only need to include the instruction in one or the other. Most people find that the robots.txt file is the preferred solution because it will only take a few lines to specify which parts of a well structured site should and should not be crawled.
-
What do you mean by meta robots instructions? Are you referring to the meta tags that go on each individual page? In that case, no, you don't necessarily need them. Robots assume a page should be crawled unless told otherwise. I'd still do it for pages that you don't want indexed and/or followed because a lot of times, robots, especially Google, seem to ignore these directives.
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
-
Can I Block https URLs using Host directive in robots.txt?
Hello Moz Community, Recently, I have found that Google bots has started crawling HTTPs urls of my website which is increasing the number of duplicate pages at our website. Instead of creating a separate robots.txt file for https version of my website, can I use Host directive in the robots.txt to suggest Google bots which is the original version of the website. Host: http://www.example.com I was wondering if this method will work and suggest Google bots that HTTPs URLs are the mirror of this website. Thanks for all of the great responses! Regards,
Technical SEO | | TJC.co.uk
Ramendra0 -
Meta Keywords - Should I define them myself
Hi All, Im sure this has been answered somewhere but I couldn't find it. SEOQuake etc suggest you should define meta keywords. However I was under the impression that this was not best practice Can anyone confirm what I should do/ is best practice? Cheers Bowey
Technical SEO | | CFCU0 -
Best use of robots.txt for "garbage" links from Joomla!
I recently started out on Seomoz and is trying to make some cleanup according to the campaign report i received. One of my biggest gripes is the point of "Dublicate Page Content". Right now im having over 200 pages with dublicate page content. Now.. This is triggerede because Seomoz have snagged up auto generated links from my site. My site has a "send to freind" feature, and every time someone wants to send a article or a product to a friend via email a pop-up appears. Now it seems like the pop-up pages has been snagged by the seomoz spider,however these pages is something i would never want to index in Google. So i just want to get rid of them. Now to my question I guess the best solution is to make a general rule via robots.txt, so that these pages is not indexed and considered by google at all. But, how do i do this? what should my syntax be? A lof of the links looks like this, but has different id numbers according to the product that is being send: http://mywebshop.dk/index.php?option=com_redshop&view=send_friend&pid=39&tmpl=component&Itemid=167 I guess i need a rule that grabs the following and makes google ignore links that contains this: view=send_friend
Technical SEO | | teleman0 -
Need advice on having customer stores running on my subdomain
We have an online store product and we're working on the SEO for our new domain (foo.com in this example.) Our customers have the ability to change the domain of their store but many of them will likely stick with the subdomains we give them (store1.foo.com) We could potentially have thousands of stores soon using our subdomain. Each of these stores will have a very small link at the bottom to our own domain but other than this, the content is completely user-generated and not under our control. Are there risks/problems associated with this type of strategy? If so, could we perhaps avoid them by using robots.txt to block entire site until they change to their own domain? TIA, Sean
Technical SEO | | schof0 -
Robots.txt Showing in SERP Results
Currently doing a technical audit for a website and when I search "Site:website.com -www" the only result is website.com/robots.txt I was wondering if anyone else has come across this before -- or what this may mean from a technical audit standpoint. Thank you!
Technical SEO | | vectormedia0 -
Robots.txt Sitemap with Relative Path
Hi Everyone, In robots.txt, can the sitemap be indicated with a relative path? I'm trying to roll out a robots file to ~200 websites, and they all have the same relative path for a sitemap but each is hosted on its own domain. Basically I'm trying to avoid needing to create 200 different robots.txt files just to change the domain. If I do need to do that, though, is there an easier way than just trudging through it?
Technical SEO | | MRCSearch0 -
Robots.txt question
Hello, What does the following command mean - User-agent: * Allow: / Does it mean that we are blocking all spiders ? Is Allow supported in robots.txt ? Thanks
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050 -
Robots.txt usage
Hey Guys, I am about make an important improvement to our site's robots.txt we have large number of properties on our site and we have different views for them. List, gallery and map view. By default list view shows up and user can navigate through gallery view. We donot want gallery pages to get indexed and want to save our crawl budget for more important pages. this is one example of our site: http://www.holiday-rentals.co.uk/France/r31.htm When you click on "gallery view" URL of this site will remain same in your address bar: but when you mouse over the "gallery view" tab it will show you URL with parameter "view=g". there are number of parameters: "view=g, view=l and view=m". http://www.holiday-rentals.co.uk/France/r31.htm?view=l http://www.holiday-rentals.co.uk/France/r31.htm?view=g http://www.holiday-rentals.co.uk/France/r31.htm?view=m Now my question is: I If restrict bots by adding "Disallow: ?view=" in our robots.txt will it effect the list view too? Will be very thankful if yo look into this for us. Many thanks Hassan I will test this on some other site within our network too before putting it to important one's. to measure the impact but will be waiting for your recommendations. Thanks
Technical SEO | | holidayseo0