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
-
WP DomainName.de in permalink
Hey. On my WordPress page I did reviews about other websites. My page is in German language. My keywords and title are: "DomainName.de Erfahrungen". Wordpress changes the dot "." to an dash "-" and I cannot change it. Yoast SEO told me, my keywords are not (complete) in my permalink. Google use an "-" to separate to words (https://moz.com/community/q/how-is-a-dash-or-handled-by-google-search). Wordpress changes a "." to a "-": domain-de Invasion forum just removes the ".": domainde Trustpilot has the full domainame in permalink: domain.de So what's is the best strategy for the best SEO results?
Technical SEO | | cwltd0 -
Does duplicate content not concern Rand?
Hello all, I'm a new SEOer and I'm currently trying to navigate the layman's minefield that is trying to understand duplicate content issues in as best I can. I'm working on a website at the moment where there's a duplicate content issue with blog archives/categories/tags etc. I was planning to beat this by implementing a noindex meta tag on those pages where there are duplicate content issues. Before I go ahead with this I thought: "Hey, these Moz guys seem to know what they're doing! What would Rand do?" Blogs on the website in question appear in full and in date order relating to the tag/category/what-have-you creating the duplicate content problem. Much like Rand's blog here at Moz - I thought I'd have a look at the source code to see how it was dealt with. My amateur eyes could find nothing to help answer this question: E.g. Both the following URLs appear in SERPs (using site:moz,com and very targeted keywords, but they're there): https://moz.com/rand/does-making-a-website-mobile-friendly-have-a-universally-positive-impact-on-mobile-traffic/ https://moz.com/rand/category/moz/ Both pages have a rel="canonical" pointing to themselves. I can understand why he wouldn't be fussed about the category not ranking, but the blog? Is this not having a negative effect? I'm just a little confused as there are so many conflicting "best practice" tips out there - and now after digging around in the source code on Rand's blog I'm more confused than ever! Any help much appreciated, Thanks
Technical SEO | | sbridle1 -
Indexing pages content that is not needed
Hi All, I have a site that has articles and a side block that shows interesting articles in a column block. While we google for a keyword i can see the page but the meta description is picked from the side block "interesting articles" and not the actual article in the page. How can i deny indexing that block alone Thanks
Technical SEO | | jomin740 -
How can something be duplicate content of itself?
Just got the new crawl report, and I have a recurring issue that comes back around every month or so, which is that a bunch of pages are reported as duplicate content for themselves. Literally the same URL: http://awesomewidgetworld.com/promotions.shtml is reporting that http://awesomewidgetworld.com/promotions.shtml is both a duplicate title, and duplicate content. Well, I would hope so! It's the same URL! Is this a crawl error? Is it a site error? Has anyone seen this before? Do I need to give more information? P.S. awesomewidgetworld is not the actual site name.
Technical SEO | | BetAmerica0 -
SEOMoz Crawling Errors
I recently implemented a blog using WordPress on our website. I didn't use WordPress as the CMS for the rest of our site just the blog portion. So as an example I installed Wordpress in http://www.mysite/blog/" not in the root. My error report in SEOMoz went from 0 to 22e. The Moz bot or crawler that SEOMoz uses is reporting a ton of 4xx errors to strang links that shouldn't exist anywhere on the site. Example: Good link - http://www.mysite/products.html Bad link reported by SEOMoz - http://www.mysite/blog/my-first-post/products.html I've also noticed that my page speed as become much slower as reported by Google. Does anybody know what could be happening here? I know that typically it's better to install WordPress in the root and use it to control the entire site but I was under the gun to get a blog out. Thanks
Technical SEO | | TRICORSystems0 -
Crawling and indexing content
If a page element (div, e.g.) is initially hidden and shown only by a hover descriptor or Javascript call, will Google crawl and index it’s content?
Technical SEO | | Mont0 -
Duplicate Content issue
I have been asked to review an old website to an identify opportunities for increasing search engine traffic. Whilst reviewing the site I came across a strange loop. On each page there is a link to printer friendly version: http://www.websitename.co.uk/index.php?pageid=7&printfriendly=yes That page also has a link to a printer friendly version http://www.websitename.co.uk/index.php?pageid=7&printfriendly=yes&printfriendly=yes and so on and so on....... Some of these pages are being included in Google's index. I appreciate that this can't be a good thing, however, I am not 100% sure as to the extent to which it is a bad thing and the priority that should be given to getting it sorted. Just wandering what views people have on the issues this may cause?
Technical SEO | | CPLDistribution0 -
Duplicate Content Question
Just signed up for pro and did my first diagnostic check - I came back with something like 300 duplicate content errors which suprised me because every page is unique. Turns out my pages are listed as www.sportstvjobs.com and just sportstvjobs.com does that really count as duplicate? and if so does anyone know what I should be doing differently? I thought it was just a canonical issue, but best I can tell I have the canonical in there but this still came up as a duplicate error....maybe I did canonical wrong, or its some other issue? Thanks Brian Clapp
Technical SEO | | sportstvjobs0