undefined
Skip to content
Moz logo Menu open Menu close
  • Products
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Pro Home
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Home
    • STAT
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Home
    • Compare SEO Products
    • Moz Data
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis
    • Keyword Explorer
    • Link Explorer
    • Competitive Research
    • MozBar
    • More Free SEO Tools
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
    • SEO Learning Center
    • Moz Academy
    • SEO Q&A
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • Case Studies
    • The Moz Story
    • New Releases
  • Log in
  • Log out
  • Products
    • Moz Pro

      Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

    • Moz Local

      Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

    • STAT

      SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

    • Moz API

      Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

    • Compare SEO Products

      See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

    • Moz Data

      Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis

      Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

    • Keyword Explorer

      Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

    • Link Explorer

      Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

    • Competitive Research

      Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

    • MozBar

      See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

    • More Free SEO Tools

      Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO

      The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

    • SEO Learning Center

      Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

    • On-Demand Webinars

      Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

    • How-To Guides

      Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

    • Moz Academy

      Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

    • MozCon

      Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
    Moz API

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

    Find your plan
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Small Business Solutions

      Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

    • Agency Solutions

      Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

    • Enterprise Solutions

      Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

    • The Moz Story

      Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

    • Case Studies

      Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

    • New Releases

      Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

    Surface actionable competitive intel
    New Feature

    Surface actionable competitive intel

    Learn More
  • Log in
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Dashboard
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Dashboard
    • Moz Academy
  • Avatar
    • Moz Home
    • Notifications
    • Account & Billing
    • Manage Users
    • Community Profile
    • My Q&A
    • My Videos
    • Log Out

The Moz Q&A Forum

  • Forum
  • Questions
  • Users
  • Ask the Community

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. Technical SEO
  4. How to allow bots to crawl all but WP-content

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

Technical SEO
2
13
3.4k
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as question
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
  • Tom3_15
    Tom3_15 last edited by Sep 25, 2018, 2:42 PM

    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: /

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • Tom3_15
      Tom3_15 @GastonRiera last edited by Oct 17, 2018, 5:19 PM Oct 17, 2018, 5:19 PM

      Thank you for the help, Gaston!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • GastonRiera
        Gaston Riera @Tom3_15 last edited by Oct 17, 2018, 2:34 PM Oct 17, 2018, 2:34 PM

        Yeap, with that you are allowing every file ending with that extension

        Tom3_15 1 Reply Last reply Oct 17, 2018, 5:19 PM Reply Quote 0
        • Tom3_15
          Tom3_15 @Tom3_15 last edited by Oct 17, 2018, 12:00 PM Oct 17, 2018, 12:00 PM

          Can I do so with:

          Allow: *.jpg

          Allow: *.png

          GastonRiera 1 Reply Last reply Oct 17, 2018, 2:34 PM Reply Quote 0
          • Tom3_15
            Tom3_15 @GastonRiera last edited by Oct 16, 2018, 10:00 AM Oct 16, 2018, 9:59 AM

            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

            Tom3_15 1 Reply Last reply Oct 17, 2018, 12:00 PM Reply Quote 0
            • GastonRiera
              Gaston Riera @Tom3_15 last edited by Oct 15, 2018, 4:46 PM Oct 15, 2018, 4:46 PM

              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!

              Tom3_15 1 Reply Last reply Oct 16, 2018, 9:59 AM Reply Quote 0
              • Tom3_15
                Tom3_15 @GastonRiera last edited by Oct 15, 2018, 4:42 PM Oct 15, 2018, 4:42 PM

                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!

                GastonRiera 1 Reply Last reply Oct 15, 2018, 4:46 PM Reply Quote 0
                • GastonRiera
                  Gaston Riera @Tom3_15 last edited by Oct 15, 2018, 4:47 PM Oct 15, 2018, 4:31 PM

                  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

                  Tom3_15 1 Reply Last reply Oct 15, 2018, 4:42 PM Reply Quote 0
                  • Tom3_15
                    Tom3_15 @GastonRiera last edited by Oct 15, 2018, 2:58 PM Oct 15, 2018, 2:47 PM

                    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!

                    GastonRiera 1 Reply Last reply Oct 15, 2018, 4:31 PM Reply Quote 0
                    • topic:timeago_earlier,18 days
                    • Tom3_15
                      Tom3_15 @GastonRiera last edited by Sep 27, 2018, 11:52 AM Sep 27, 2018, 11:52 AM

                      Awesome. Thanks, Gaston!

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • GastonRiera
                        Gaston Riera @Tom3_15 last edited by Sep 27, 2018, 11:52 AM Sep 26, 2018, 2:57 PM

                        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

                        btsycPz

                        Tom3_15 2 Replies Last reply Oct 15, 2018, 2:47 PM Reply Quote 3
                        • Tom3_15
                          Tom3_15 @GastonRiera last edited by Sep 26, 2018, 10:30 AM Sep 26, 2018, 10:30 AM

                          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

                          GastonRiera 1 Reply Last reply Sep 26, 2018, 2:57 PM Reply Quote 0
                          • GastonRiera
                            Gaston Riera last edited by Sep 25, 2018, 4:58 PM Sep 25, 2018, 4:58 PM

                            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: *.css

                            Just 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 page

                            Hope it helps.
                            Best luck.
                            GR

                            Tom3_15 1 Reply Last reply Sep 26, 2018, 10:30 AM Reply Quote 4
                            • 1 / 1
                            1 out of 13
                            • First post
                              1/13
                              Last post

                            Got a burning SEO question?

                            Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                            Start my free trial


                            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.

                            • See all categories

                            Related Questions

                            • pok3rplay3r

                              Crawl rate dropped to zero

                              Hello, I recently moved my site in godaddy from cpanel to managed wordpress. I bought this transfer directly from GoDaddy customer service. in this process they accidentally changed my domain from www to non www. I changed it back after the migration, but as a result of this sites craw rate from search console fell to zero and has not risen at all since then. In addition to this website does not display any other errors, i can ask google manually fetch my pages and it works as before, only the crawl rates seems to be dropped permanently. GoDaddy customer service also claims that do not see any errors but I think, however, that in some way they caused this during the migration when the url changed since the timing match perfectly.  also when they accidentally removed the www, crawl rate of my sites  non www version got up but fell back to zero when I changed it back to www version. Now the crawl rate of both www and non www version is zero. How do I get it to rise again? Customer service also said that the problem may be related to ftp-data of search console?  But they were not able to help any more than .Would someone from here be able to help me with this in anyway please?

                              Technical SEO | Apr 2, 2016, 8:41 AM | pok3rplay3r
                              0
                            • netzkern_AG

                              Duplicate content through product variants

                              Hi, Before you shout at me for not searching - I did and there are indeed lots of threads and articles on this problem. I therefore realise that this problem is not exactly new or unique. The situation: I am dealing with a website that has 1 to N (n being between 1 and 6 so far) variants of a product. There are no dropdown for variants. This is not technically possible short of a complete redesign which is not on the table right now. The product variants are also not linked to each other but share about 99% of content (obvious problem here). In the "search all" they show up individually. Each product-variant is a different page, unconnected in backend as well as frontend. The system is quite limited in what can be added and entered - I may have some opportunity to influence on smaller things such as enabling canonicals. In my opinion, the optimal choice would be to retain one page for each product, the base variant, and then add dropdowns to select extras/other variants. As that is not possible, I feel that the best solution is to canonicalise all versions to one version (either base variant or best-selling product?) and to offer customers a list at each product giving him a direct path to the other variants of the product. I'd be thankful for opinions, advice or showing completely new approaches I have not even thought of! Kind Regards, Nico

                              Technical SEO | Oct 12, 2015, 6:47 AM | netzkern_AG
                              0
                            • NeilD

                              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 | Nov 14, 2012, 6:31 PM | NeilD
                              0
                            • Jom

                              Duplicate Content and URL Capitalization

                              I have multiple URLs that SEOMoz is reporting as duplicate content.  The reason is that there are characters in the URL that may, or may not, be capitalized depending on user input. A couple examples are: www.househitz.com/Pennsylvania/Houses-for-sale www.househitz.com/Pennsylvania/houses-for-sale www.househitz.com/Pennsylvania/Houses-for-rent www.househitz.com/Pennsylvania/houses-for-rent There are currently thousands of instances of this on the site. Is this something I should spend effort to try and resolve (may not be minor effort), or should I just ignore it and move on?

                              Technical SEO | Jul 9, 2012, 6:01 AM | Jom
                              0
                            • cgman

                              Solving duplicate content with WP authors, tags, categories

                              I've been kind of neglecting wordpress installations on my websites and noticed many showing duplicate content for pages showing under author and tags, tags and single post, categories and single post. Should this be a concern? Whats the best way of fixing this? Thanks

                              Technical SEO | Jul 31, 2015, 11:03 PM | cgman
                              0
                            • cmjolley

                              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 | Jul 16, 2017, 4:17 AM | cmjolley
                              0
                            • MirandaP

                              How to allow googlebot past paywall

                              Does anyone know of any ways or ideas to allow Google/Bing etc. to index your content, but have it behind a paywall for users?

                              Technical SEO | May 1, 2012, 5:15 AM | MirandaP
                              0
                            • kathiravan

                              How to resolve this Duplicate content?

                              Hi , There is page i get when i do proper menu navigation Caratlane.com>jewellery>rings>casualsrings> http://www.caratlane.com/jewellery/rings/casual-rings/leaves-dew-diamond-0-03-ct-peridot-1-ct-ring-18k-yellow-gold.html When i do a site search in my search box by my product code number "JR00219" The same page is appears with different url http://www.caratlane.com/leaves-dew-diamond-0-03-ct-peridot-1-ct-ring-18k-yellow-gold.html So there is a duplicate content. How can we resolve it. Regards, kathir caratlane.com

                              Technical SEO | Mar 23, 2012, 6:34 AM | kathiravan
                              0

                            Get started with Moz Pro!

                            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                            Start my free trial
                            Products
                            • Moz Pro
                            • Moz Local
                            • Moz API
                            • Moz Data
                            • STAT
                            • Product Updates
                            Moz Solutions
                            • SMB Solutions
                            • Agency Solutions
                            • Enterprise Solutions
                            Free SEO Tools
                            • Domain Authority Checker
                            • Link Explorer
                            • Keyword Explorer
                            • Competitive Research
                            • Brand Authority Checker
                            • Local Citation Checker
                            • MozBar Extension
                            • MozCast
                            Resources
                            • Blog
                            • SEO Learning Center
                            • Help Hub
                            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                            • How-to Guides
                            • Moz Academy
                            • API Docs
                            About Moz
                            • About
                            • Team
                            • Careers
                            • Contact
                            Why Moz
                            • Case Studies
                            • Testimonials
                            Get Involved
                            • Become an Affiliate
                            • MozCon
                            • Webinars
                            • Practical Marketer Series
                            • MozPod
                            Connect with us

                            Contact the Help team

                            Join our newsletter
                            Moz logo
                            © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                            • Accessibility
                            • Terms of Use
                            • Privacy

                            Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.