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.
Google Search console says 'sitemap is blocked by robots?
-
Google Search console is telling me "Sitemap contains URLs which are blocked by robots.txt."
I don't understand why my sitemap is being blocked? My robots.txt look like this:
User-Agent: *
Disallow:It's a WordPress site, with Yoast SEO installed. Is anyone else having this issue with Google Search console? Does anyone know how I can fix this issue?
-
Nice happy to hear that do you work with Greg Reindel? He is a good friend I looked at your IP that is why I ask?
Tom
-
I agree with David
Hey is your dev Greg Reindel? If so you can call me for help PM me here for my info.
Thomas Zickell
-
Hey guys, I ended up disabling the sitemap option from YoastSEO, then installed the 'Google (XML) sitemap' plug-in. I re-submitted the sitemap to Google last night, and it came back with no issues. I'm glad to finally have this sorted out.
Thanks for all the help!
-
Hi Christian,
The current robots.txt shouldn't be blocking those URLs.
Did you or someone else recently change the robots.txt file? If so, give Google a few days to re-crawl your site.
Also, can you check what happens when you do a fetch and render on one of the blocked posts in Search Console? Do you have issues there?
Cheers,
David
-
I think you need to make an https robots.txt file if you are running https if running https
https://moz.com/blog/xml-sitemaps
`User-agent: * Disallow: /wp-admin/ Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php` Sitemap: https://domain.com/index-sitemap.xml(that is a https site map)can you send the sitemap URL or run it though deepcrawl
Hope this helps?
Did you make a new robots.txt file?
-
Thanks for the response. Do you think this is a robots.txt issue? Or could this be caused by the YoastSEO plugin?
Do you know if this plug-in works with YoastSEO together? Or will it cause issues?
-
Thank you for the response.
I just scanned the site using 'Screaming frog'. Under Internal>Directives there were zero 'no index' links. I also check for '404 errors', server 505 errors, or anything 'blocked by robots.txt'.
Google search console is still showing me that there are URL's being blocked by my sitemap. (I added a screenshot of this). When I click through, it tells me that the 'post sitemap' has over +300 warnings.
I have just deleted the YoastSEO plugin, and I am now re-installing it. hopefully, this fixes the issue.
-
No, you do not need to change or plug-in what is happening is Webmaster tools is telling you that you have no index or no follow were robots xTag somewhere on your URLs inside your sitemap.
Run your site through Moz, screaming frog Seo spider or deepcrawl and look for no indexed URLs.
webmaster tools/search console is telling you that you have no index URLs inside of your XML sitemap not that you robots.txt is blocking it. This would be set in the Yoast plugin. one way to correct it is to look for noindex URLs & filter them inside Yoast so they are not being presented to the crawlers.
If you would like you can turn off the sitemap on Yoast and turn it back on if that does not work I recommend completely removing the plug-in and reinstalling it
- https://kb.yoast.com/kb/how-can-i-uninstall-my-plugin/
- https://kinsta.com/blog/uninstall-wordpress-plugin/
Can you send a screenshot of what you're seeing?
When you see it in Google Webmaster tools are you talking about the XML sitemap itself mean no indexed because all XML sitemaps are no indexed.
Please add this to your robots.txt
`User-agent:* Disallow:/wp-admin/ Allow:/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php` Sitemap: http://www.website.com/sitemap_index.xmlI hope this is of help,
Tom
-
Hi,
Use this plugin
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-robots-txt/
it will remove previous robots.txt and set simple wordpress robots.txt and wait for a day
problem can be solved.
Also watch this video on the same @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZiyN07bbBM
Thanks
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
-
Unsolved Google Search Console Still Reporting Errors After Fixes
Hello, I'm working on a website that was too bloated with content. We deleted many pages and set up redirects to newer pages. We also resolved an unreasonable amount of 400 errors on the site. I also removed several ancient sitemaps that listed content deleted years ago that Google was crawling. According to Moz and Screaming Frog, these errors have been resolved. We've submitted the fixes for validation in GSC, but the validation repeatedly fails. What could be going on here? How can we resolve these error in GSC.
Technical SEO | May 10, 2023, 2:40 PM | tif-swedensky0 -
Page disappears from Google search results
Hi, I recently encountered a very strange problem.
Technical SEO | Jun 13, 2021, 7:57 PM | JoelssonMedia
One of the pages I published in my website ranked very well for a couple of days on top 5, then after a couple of days, the page completely vanished, no matter how direct I search for it, does not appear on the results, I check GSC, everything seems to be normal, but when checking Google analytics, I find it strange that there is no data on the page since it disappeared and it also does not show up on the 'active pages' section no matter how many different computers i keep it open. I have checked to page 9, and used a couple of keyword tools and it appears nowhere! It didn't have any back links, but it was unique and high quality. I have checked on the page does still exist and it is still readable. Has this ´happened to anyone before? Any thoughts would be gratefully received.0 -
Errors In Search Console
Hi All, I am hoping someone might be able to help with this. Last week one of my sites dropped from mid first day to bottom of page 1. We had not been link building as such and it only seems to of affected a single search term and the ranking page (which happens to be the home page). When I was going through everything I went to search console and in crawl errors there are 2 errors that showed up as detected 3 days before the drop. These are: wp-admin/admin-ajax.php showing as response code 400 and also xmlrpc.php showing as response code 405 robots.txt is as follows: user-agent: * disallow: /wp-admin/ allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php Any help with what is wrong here and how to fix it would be greatly appreciated. Many Thanks
Technical SEO | Jul 9, 2018, 1:28 PM | DaleZon0 -
Do I need to block my cart page in robots.txt?
I have a site with woocommerce. Do I need to block the cart page?
Technical SEO | Mar 6, 2015, 5:36 PM | EcommerceSite0 -
Should I block Map pages with robots.txt?
Hello, I have a website that was started in 1999. On the website I have map pages for each of the offices listed on my site, for which there are about 120. Each of the 120 maps is in a whole separate html page. There is no content in the page other than the map. I know all of the offices love having the map pages so I don't want to remove the pages. So, my question is would these pages with no real content be hurting the rankings of the other pages on our site? Therefore, should I block the pages with my robots.txt? Would I also have to remove these pages (in webmaster tools?) from Google for blocking by robots.txt to really work? I appreciate your feedback, thanks!
Technical SEO | Oct 29, 2014, 3:37 PM | imaginex0 -
Will an XML sitemap override a robots.txt
I have a client that has a robots.txt file that is blocking an entire subdomain, entirely by accident. Their original solution, not realizing the robots.txt error, was to submit an xml sitemap to get their pages indexed. I did not think this tactic would work, as the robots.txt would take precedent over the xmls sitemap. But it worked... I have no explanation as to how or why. Does anyone have an answer to this? or any experience with a website that has had a clear Disallow: / for months , that somehow has pages in the index?
Technical SEO | Apr 10, 2013, 8:50 PM | KCBackofen0 -
Javascript to manipulate Google's bounce rate and time on site?
I was referred to this "awesome" solution to high bounce rates. It is suppose to "fix" bounce rates and lower them through this simple script. When the bounce rate goes way down then rankings dramatically increase (interesting study but not my question). I don't know javascript but simply adding a script to the footer and watch everything fall into place seems a bit iffy to me. Can someone with experience in JS help me by explaining what this script does? I think it manipulates the reporting it does to GA but I'm not sure. It was supposed to be placed in the footer of the page and then sit back and watch the dollars fly in. 🙂
Technical SEO | Jun 27, 2012, 4:55 PM | BenRWoodard1 -
Blank pages in Google's webcache
Hello all, Is anybody experiencing blanck page's in Google's 'Cached' view? I'm seeing just the page background and none of the content for a couple of my pages but when I click 'View Text Only' all of teh content is there. Strange! I'd love to hear if anyone else is experiencing the same. Perhaps this is something to do with the roll out of Google's updates last week?! Thanks,
Technical SEO | Mar 5, 2012, 10:33 AM | A_Q
Elias0