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.
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
-
Just caught this a bit late and probably to late to add something but my two pence is test it in Webmaster Tools, via Crawl -> Robot.txt tester - if you've not used this before simply add the url you want to test and Google highlights the directive that allows or disallows it.
-
Thank you Cyrus, yes, I have tried your suggested robots.txt checker and despite it validates the file, it shows me a couple of warnings about the "unusual" use of wildcard. It is my understanding that I would probably need to discuss all this with Google folks directly.
Thank you for you answer... and, yes Keri, I know this is a old thread, but still useful today!
Thanks
-
Can't say with 100% confidence, but sounds like it might work. You could always upload it to a server and use a robots.txt checker to validate, although sometimes the validator tools may incorporate slight differences in edge cases like this that make them moot.
-
Just a quick note, this question is actually from spring of 2012.
-
What about something like:
allow: /directory/$
disallow: /directory/*
Where I want this to be indexed:
http://www.mysite.com/directory/
But not this:
http://www.mysite.com/directory/sub-directory/
Ideas?
-
I really appreciate all that effort you put in to ensure your method was correct. many thanks.
-
Interesting question - I've had this discussion a couple of times with different SEOs. Here's my best understanding: There are actually 2 different answers - one if you are talking about Google, and one for every other search engine.
For most search engines, the "Allow" should come first. This is because the first matching pattern always wins, for the reasons Geoff stated.
But Google is different. They state:
"At a group-member level, in particular for
allow
anddisallow
directives, the most specific rule based on the length of the [path] entry will trump the less specific (shorter) rule. The order of precedence for rules with wildcards is undefined."Robots.txt Specifications - Webmasters — Google Developers
So for Google, order is not important, only the specificity of the rule based on the length of the entry. But the order of precedence for rules with wildcards is undefined.
This last part is important, because your directives contain wildcards. If I'm reading this right, your particular directives:
Allow: /models/ford///page*
Disallow: /models////pageSo if it's "undefined" which directive will Google follow, if order isn't important? Fortunately, there's a simple way to find out.Google Webmaster allows you to test any robots.txt file. I created a dummy file based on your rules, In this case, your directives worked perfectly no matter what order I put them in.
| http://cyrusshepard.com/models/ford/test/test/pages | Allowed by line 2: Allow: /models/ford///page* | Allowed by line 2: Allow: /models/ford///page* |
| http://cyrusshepard.com/models/chevy/test/test/pages | Blocked by line 3: Disallow: /models////page | Blocked by line 3: Disallow: /models////page |So, to summarize:1. Always put Allow directives first, as most search engines follow the "first rule counts" rule.2. Google doesn't care about order, but rather the specificity based on the length of the entry.3. The order of precedence for rules with wildcards is undefined.4. When in doubt, check your robots.txt file in Google Webmaster tools.Hope this helps.(sorry for the very long answer which basically says you were right all along
-
I understand your concern. I am basing my answer based on the fact that if you don't have a robots.txt at all, Google will still crawl you, which means its an allow by default. So all that matters in my opinion is the disallow, but because you need an allow from the wildcard disallow, you could allow that and disallow next.
Honestly, I don't think it matters. If you think the way a bot would work, it's not like robots.txt 1 line is read, then the bot goes crawling and then comes back reads the next line and so on. Does that make sense ? It reads all the lines in the robots.txt and then follows the directives. But to be sure, you can do either of the scenarios and see for yourself. I am sure the results would be same either way.
-
The allow directives need to come before the disallow directives for the same directory/file paths. (I have never personally tested this although it makes logical sense to instruct a robot to access one particular path within a directory structure before it sees that it is blocked from crawling that directory).
For example:-
Allow: /profiles
Disallow: /s2/profiles/me
Allow: /s2/profiles
Allow: /s2/photos
Allow: /s2/static
Disallow: /s2
As per how Google have formatted their robots.txt.
-
Thanks. I want to make sure I get this right in a syntax universally understood by all engines. I have seen webmasters all over the place on this one with some saying that crawlers use a first matching rule and others that say that crawlers use a last matching rule. I am almost thinking to have the allow command twice - before and after, to cover all bases.
-
I don't think it matters, but I think I would disallow first, because by default everything is an Allow.
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
-
Robot.txt : How to block a specific file type in several subdirectories ?
Hello everyone ! I need help setting up a robot.txt. I'm trying to block all pdf files in particular directories so I'm using this command. In the example below the line is blocking all .gif in the entire site. Block files of a specific file type (for example, .gif) | Disallow: /*.gif$ 2 questions : Can I use this command to specify one particular directory in which I want to block pdf files ? Will this line be recognized by googlebots ? Disallow: /fileadmin/xxxxxxx/xxx/xxxxxxx/*.pdf$ Then I realized that I would have to write as many lines as many directories there are in which I want to block pdf files. Let's say I want to block pdf files in all these 3 directories /fileadmin/directory1 /fileadmin/directory1/sub1 /fileadmin/directory1/sub1/pdf Is there a pattern-matching rule I could use to blocks access to pdf files in all subdirectories instead of writing 3x the above line for each subdirectory ? For exemple : Disallow: /fileadmin/directory1*/ Many thanks in advance for any insight you may have.
Technical SEO | | LabeliumUSA0 -
Robots.txt Syntax for Dynamic URLs
I want to Disallow certain dynamic pages in robots.txt and am unsure of the proper syntax. The pages I want to disallow all include the string ?Page= Which is the proper syntax?
Technical SEO | | btreloar
Disallow: ?Page=
Disallow: ?Page=*
Disallow: ?Page=
Or something else?0 -
Robots.txt & meta noindex--site still shows up on Google Search
I have set up my robots.txt like this: User-agent: *
Technical SEO | | RoxBrock
Disallow: / and I have this meta tag in my on a Wordpress site, set up with SEO Yoast name="robots" content="noindex,follow"/> I did "Fetch as Google" on my Google Search Console My website is still showing up in the search results and it says this: "A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt" This site has not shown up for years and now it is ranking above my site that I want to rank for this keyword. How do I get Google to ignore this site? This seems really weird and I'm confused how a site with little content, that has not been updated for years can rank higher than a site that is constantly updated and improved.1 -
Adding multi-language sitemaps to robots.txt
I am working on a revamped multi-language site that has moved to Magento. Each language runs off the core coding so there are no sub-directories per language. The developer has created sitemaps which have been uploaded to their respective GWT accounts. They have placed the sitemaps in new directories such as: /sitemap/uk/sitemap.xml /sitemap/de/sitemap.xml I want to add the sitemaps to the robots.txt but can't figure out how to do it. Also should they have placed the sitemaps in a single location with the file identifying each language: /sitemap/uk-sitemap.xml /sitemap/de-sitemap.xml What is the cleanest way of handling these sitemaps and can/should I get them on robots.txt?
Technical SEO | | MickEdwards0 -
Googlebot does not obey robots.txt disallow
Hi Mozzers! We are trying to get Googlebot to steer away from our internal search results pages by adding a parameter "nocrawl=1" to facet/filter links and then robots.txt disallow all URLs containing that parameter. We implemented this late august and since that, the GWMT message "Googlebot found an extremely high number of URLs on your site", stopped coming. But today we received yet another. The weird thing is that Google gives many of our nowadays robots.txt disallowed URLs as examples of URLs that may cause us problems. What could be the reason? Best regards, Martin
Technical SEO | | TalkInThePark0 -
Oh no googlebot can not access my robots.txt file
I just receive a n error message from google webmaster Wonder it was something to do with Yoast plugin. Could somebody help me with troubleshooting this? Here's original message Over the last 24 hours, Googlebot encountered 189 errors while attempting to access your robots.txt. To ensure that we didn't crawl any pages listed in that file, we postponed our crawl. Your site's overall robots.txt error rate is 100.0%. Recommended action If the site error rate is 100%: Using a web browser, attempt to access http://www.soobumimphotography.com//robots.txt. If you are able to access it from your browser, then your site may be configured to deny access to googlebot. Check the configuration of your firewall and site to ensure that you are not denying access to googlebot. If your robots.txt is a static page, verify that your web service has proper permissions to access the file. If your robots.txt is dynamically generated, verify that the scripts that generate the robots.txt are properly configured and have permission to run. Check the logs for your website to see if your scripts are failing, and if so attempt to diagnose the cause of the failure. If the site error rate is less than 100%: Using Webmaster Tools, find a day with a high error rate and examine the logs for your web server for that day. Look for errors accessing robots.txt in the logs for that day and fix the causes of those errors. The most likely explanation is that your site is overloaded. Contact your hosting provider and discuss reconfiguring your web server or adding more resources to your website. After you think you've fixed the problem, use Fetch as Google to fetch http://www.soobumimphotography.com//robots.txt to verify that Googlebot can properly access your site.
Technical SEO | | BistosAmerica0 -
Removing robots.txt on WordPress site problem
Hi..am a little confused since I ticked the box in WordPress to allow search engines to now crawl my site (previously asked for them not to) but Google webmaster tools is telling me I still have robots.txt blocking them so am unable to submit the sitemap. Checked source code and the robots instruction has gone so a little lost. Any ideas please?
Technical SEO | | Wallander0 -
How do you disallow HTTPS?
I currently have a site (startuploans.org) that runs everything as http, recently we decided to start an online application to process loan apps. Now, for one certain section we configured ssl to work (https://www.startuploans.org/secure/). If I go to the HTTPS url for any of my other pages they show up...I was going to just 301 everything from https but because it is in a subdirectiory I can't... Also, canonical URL's won't work either because it's a totally different system and the pages are generated in an odd manor. It's really just 1 page that needs to be disallowed.. Is there any way to disallow all HTTPS requests from robots.txt while keeping all the HTTP requests working as normal?
Technical SEO | | WebsiteConsultants0