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.
How to allow bots to crawl all but WP-content
-
Hello,
I would like my website to remain crawlable to bots, but to block my wp content and media. Does the following robots.txt work? I worry that the * user agent may conflict with the others.
User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/
Disallow: /wp-content/User-agent: GoogleBot
Allow: /User-agent: GoogleBot-Mobile
Allow: /User-agent: GoogleBot-Image
Allow: /User-agent: Bingbot
Allow: /User-agent: Slurp
Allow: / -
Thank you for the help, Gaston!
-
Yeap, with that you are allowing every file ending with that extension
-
Can I do so with:
Allow: *.jpg
Allow: *.png
-
Thanks, Gaston. I should have been more clear about what I am looking to do. I currently am having an indexation issue. Somehow, pages are being automatically generated by WordPress.
These pages are often .txt files of information or code from plugins, all beginning with /wp-content/uploads/ in their URL. I have been manually removing them from the index and would like to now have them be uncrawlable.
Best
-
Oh god, my mistake!
Im deeply sorry, yes, this configuration will block images! that follow that folder structure!I'll correct myself.
Thanks for pointing it out! -
Gaston,
Thanks for the fast reply! My images folder does follow that format, which is what makes me worrisome as we are blocking the wp-conent folder.
Thanks!
-
Hi Tom,
Yes, this config will allow images to be crawled,
No, this config will block images to be crawled,as long as your wordpress has the defalt folder for images: /wp-content/uploads/year/month/image-name.png
How to know, super easy, where your images are stored? Go to the web where you can find an image... Then right clic and then copy link address. With that link you will find that folder structure.
Hope it helps.
Best luck.
GR -
Hi Gaston,
I just wanted to follow up with you with one last question if possible. Would this allow my images and PDF's to be crawled & indexed still?
Thanks!
-
Awesome. Thanks, Gaston!
-
Yes it does.
As I said earlier. Copy and paste that code into the robot.txt tester in any of your search console and try with some name.css or testing.js just for testing.
Check the image i've attached.Hope it helps.
Best luck
GR -
Thank you for the response. I'm still a little uncertain, does the version you wrote allow the bots to crawl the css and js as well?
Best
-
Hi Tom!
That Robots.txt config is pretty redundant.
To acheive what you what, thy this:User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/
Disallow: /wp-content/
Allow: *.js
Allow: *.cssJust 3 things to note here:
1- That User-agent:* and those disallows blocks for every bot to crawl whats in those folders.
2- When blocking /wp-content/ you are also blocking the /themes/ folder and inside are the .js and .css files. Blocking those files cause to googlebot not being able to render correctly that page and see it different from what a normal user would see.
3- Those Allow:/ dont prevent the disallow.To try that configuration, you can use the robots.txt tester in search console, just inder the Crawl menu.
Remember that by default google considers that you are not blocking nothing.
More info here: The web robots.tat pageHope it helps.
Best luck.
GR
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
-
Collapsible sections - content
**Hi,****I am looking to improve the aesthetics of some pages on my website by adding written content into collapsible tabs. I was wondering whether the content that is ‘hidden’ by tabs is given less weight by Google from the perspective of SEO? **Some articles I have read suggest that tabbed content is weighted equally with the content which is already immediately visible to the user, but others suggest that this may not be the case. **Please, can I request opinions on the matter? Any advice would be greatly appreciated, many thanks.**Katarina
Technical SEO | | Katarina-Borovska0 -
Content in Accordion doesn't rank as well as Content in Text box?
Does content rank better in a full view text layout, rather than in a clickable accordion? I read somewhere because users need to click into an accordion it may not rank as well, as it may be considered hidden on the page - is this true? accordion example: see features: https://www.workday.com/en-us/applications/student.html
Technical SEO | | DigitalCRO1 -
Handling of Duplicate Content
I just recently signed and joined the moz.com system. During the initial report for our web site it shows we have lots of duplicate content. The web site is real estate based and we are loading IDX listings from other brokerages into our site. If though these listings look alike, they are not. Each has their own photos, description and addresses. So why are they appear as duplicates – I would assume that they are all too closely related. Lots for Sale primarily – and it looks like lazy agents have 4 or 5 lots and input the description the same. Unfortunately for us, part of the IDX agreement is that you cannot pick and choose which listings to load and you cannot change the content. You are either all in or you cannot use the system. How should one manage duplicate content like this? Or should we ignore it? Out of 1500+ listings on our web site it shows 40 of them are duplicates.
Technical SEO | | TIM_DOTCOM0 -
CDN Being Crawled and Indexed by Google
I'm doing a SEO site audit, and I've discovered that the site uses a Content Delivery Network (CDN) that's being crawled and indexed by Google. There are two sub-domains from the CDN that are being crawled and indexed. A small number of organic search visitors have come through these two sub domains. So the CDN based content is out-ranking the root domain, in a small number of cases. It's a huge duplicate content issue (tens of thousands of URLs being crawled) - what's the best way to prevent the crawling and indexing of a CDN like this? Exclude via robots.txt? Additionally, the use of relative canonical tags (instead of absolute) appear to be contributing to this problem as well. As I understand it, these canonical tags are telling the SEs that each sub domain is the "home" of the content/URL. Thanks! Scott
Technical SEO | | Scott-Thomas0 -
Does Google know what footer content is?
We plan to do away with fixed footer content and make, for the most part, the content in the traditional footer area unique just like the 'main' part of the content. This begs the question, do Google know what is footer content as opposed to main on page content?
Technical SEO | | NeilD0 -
Cloaking? Best Practices Crawling Content Behind Login Box
Hi- I'm helping out a client, who publishes sale information (fashion sales etc.) In order for the client to view the sale details (date, percentage off etc.) they need to register for the site. If I allow google bot to crawl the content, (identify the user agent) but serve up a registration light box to anyone who isn't google would this be considered cloaking? Does anyone know what the best practice for this is? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you, Nopadon
Technical SEO | | nopadon0 -
Squarespace Duplicate Content Issues
My site is built through squarespace and when I ran the campaign in SEOmoz...its come up with all these errors saying duplicate content and duplicate page title for my blog portion. I've heard that canonical tags help with this but with squarespace its hard to add code to page level...only site wide is possible. Was curious if there's someone experienced in squarespace and SEO out there that can give some suggestions on how to resolve this problem? thanks
Technical SEO | | cmjolley0 -
Crawling image folders / crawl allowance
We recently removed /img and /imgp from our robots.txt file thus allowing googlebot to crawl our image folders. Not sure why we had these blocked in the first place, but we opened them up in response to an email from Google Product Search about not being able to crawl images - which can/has hurt our traffic from Google Shopping. My question is: will allowing Google to crawl our image files eat up our 'crawl allowance'? We wouldn't want Google to not crawl/index certain pages, and ding our organic traffic, because more of our allotted crawl bandwidth is getting chewed up crawling image files. Outside of the non-detailed crawl stat graphs from Webmaster Tools, what's the best way to check how frequently/ deeply our site is getting crawled? Thanks all!
Technical SEO | | evoNick0