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.
Robots.txt: how to exclude sub-directories correctly?
-
Hello here,
I am trying to figure out the correct way to tell SEs to crawls this:
http://www.mysite.com/directory/
But not this:
http://www.mysite.com/directory/sub-directory/
or this:
http://www.mysite.com/directory/sub-directory2/sub-directory/...
But with the fact I have thousands of sub-directories with almost infinite combinations, I can't put the following definitions in a manageable way:
disallow: /directory/sub-directory/
disallow: /directory/sub-directory2/
disallow: /directory/sub-directory/sub-directory/
disallow: /directory/sub-directory2/subdirectory/
etc...
I would end up having thousands of definitions to disallow all the possible sub-directory combinations.
So, is the following way a correct, better and shorter way to define what I want above:
allow: /directory/$
disallow: /directory/*
Would the above work?
Any thoughts are very welcome! Thank you in advance.
Best,
Fab.
-
I mentioned both. You add a meta robots to noindex and remove from the sitemap.
-
But google is still free to index a link/page even if it is not included in xml sitemap.
-
Install Yoast Wordpress SEO plugin and use that to restrict what is indexed and what is allowed in a sitemap.
-
I am using wordpress, Enfold theme (themeforest).
I want some files to be accessed by google, but those should not be indexed.
Here is an example: http://prntscr.com/h8918o
I have currently blocked some JS directories/files using robots.txt (check screenshot)
But due to this I am not able to pass Mobile Friendly Test on Google: http://prntscr.com/h8925z (check screenshot)
Is its possible to allow access, but use a tag like noindex in the robots.txt file. Or is there any other way out.
-
Yes, everything looks good, Webmaster Tools gave me the expected results with the following directives:
allow: /directory/$
disallow: /directory/*
Which allows this URL:
http://www.mysite.com/directory/
But doesn't allow the following one:
http://www.mysite.com/directory/sub-directory2/...
This page also gives an update similar to mine:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/156449?hl=en
I think I am good! Thanks
-
Thank you Michael, it is my understanding then that my idea of doing this:
allow: /directory/$
disallow: /directory/*
Should work just fine. I will test it within Google Webmaster Tools, and let you know if any problems arise.
In the meantime if anyone else has more ideas about all this and can confirm me that would be great!
Thank you again.
-
I've always stuck to Disallow and followed -
"This is currently a bit awkward, as there is no "Allow" field. The easy way is to put all files to be disallowed into a separate directory, say "stuff", and leave the one file in the level above this directory:"
http://www.robotstxt.org/robotstxt.html
From https://developers.google.com/webmasters/control-crawl-index/docs/robots_txt this seems contradictory
|
/*
| equivalent to / | equivalent to / | Equivalent to "/" -- the trailing wildcard is ignored. |I think this post will be very useful for you - http://moz.com/community/q/allow-or-disallow-first-in-robots-txt
-
Thank you Michael,
Google and other SEs actually recognize the "allow:" command:
https://developers.google.com/webmasters/control-crawl-index/docs/robots_txt
The fact is: if I don't specify that, how can I be sure that the following single command:
disallow: /directory/*
Doesn't prevent SEs to spider the /directory/ index as I'd like to?
-
As long as you dont have directories somewhere in /* that you want indexed then I think that will work. There is no allow so you don't need the first line just
disallow: /directory/*
You can test out here- https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/156449?rd=1
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
-
Robots.txt & Disallow: /*? Question!
Hi, I have a site where they have: Disallow: /*? Problem is we need the following indexed: ?utm_source=google_shopping What would the best solution be? I have read: User-agent: *
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vetofunk
Allow: ?utm_source=google_shopping
Disallow: /*? Any ideas?0 -
Large robots.txt file
We're looking at potentially creating a robots.txt with 1450 lines in it. This will remove 100k+ pages from the crawl that are all old pages (I know, the ideal would be to delete/noindex but not viable unfortunately) Now the issue i'm thinking is that a large robots.txt will either stop the robots.txt from being followed or will slow our crawl rate down. Does anybody have any experience with a robots.txt of that size?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ThomasHarvey0 -
What are the best practices for geo-targeting by sub-folders?
My domain is currently targeting the US, but I'm building out sub-folders that will need to geo-target France, England, and Spain. Each country will have it's own sub-folder, and professionally translated (domain.com/france). Other than the hreflang tags, what are other best practices I can implement? Can Google Webmaster tools geo-target by subfolder? Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks Justin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rhythm_Agency0 -
If Robots.txt have blocked an Image (Image URL) but the other page which can be indexed has this image, how is the image treated?
Hi MOZers, This probably is a dumb question but I have a case where the robots.tags has an image url blocked but this image is used on a page (lets call it Page A) which can be indexed. If the image on Page A has an Alt tags, then how is this information digested by crawlers? A) would Google totally ignore the image and the ALT tags information? OR B) Google would consider the ALT tags information? I am asking this because all the images on the website are blocked by robots.txt at the moment but I would really like website crawlers to crawl the alt tags information. Chances are that I will ask the webmaster to allow indexing of images too but I would like to understand what's happening currently. Looking forward to all your responses 🙂 Malika
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Malika11 -
How can I get Bing to index my subdomain correctly?
Hi guys, My website exists on a subdomain (i.e. https://website.subdomain.com) and is being indexed correctly on all search engines except Bing and Duck Duck Go, which list 'https://www.website.subdomain.com'. Unfortunately my subdomain isn't configured for www (the domain is out of my control), so searchers are seeing a server error when clicking on my homepage in the SERPs. I have verified the site successfully in Bing Webmaster Tools, but it still shows up incorrectly. Does anyone have any advice on how I could fix this issue? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cos20300 -
Robots Disallow Backslash - Is it right command
Bit skeptical, as due to dynamic url and some other linkage issue, google has crawled url with backslash and asterisk character ex - www.xyz.com/\/index.php?option=com_product www.xyz.com/\"/index.php?option=com_product Now %5c is the encoded version of \ - backslash & %22 is encoded version of asterisk Need to know for command :- User-agent: * Disallow: \As am disallowing all backslash url through this - will it only remove the backslash url which are duplicates or the entire site,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Modi0 -
Robots.txt is blocking Wordpress Pages from Googlebot?
I have a robots.txt file on my server, which I did not develop, it was done by the web designer at the company before me. Then there is a word press plugin that generates a robots.txt file. How Do I unblock all the wordpress pages from googlebot?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ENSO0 -
Getting Google to Correct a Misspelled Site Link...Help!
My company website recently got its site links in google search... WooHoo! However, when you type TECHeGO into Google Search one of the links is spelled incorrectly. Instead of 'CONversion Optimization' its 'COversion Optimization'. At first I thought there was a misspelling on that page somewhere but there is not and have come to the conclusion that Google has made a mistake. I know that I can block the page in webmaster tools (No Thanks) but how in the crap can I get them to correct the spelling when no one really knows how to get them to appear in the first place? Riddle Me That Folks! sitelink.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TECHeGO0