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 do i block an entire category/directory with robots.txt?
-
Anyone has any idea how to block an entire product category, including all the products in that category using the robots.txt file? I'm using woocommerce in wordpress and i'd like to prevent bots from crawling every single one of products urls for now.
The confusing part right now is that i have several different url structures linking to every single one of my products for example www.mystore.com/all-products, www.mystore.com/product-category, etc etc.
I'm not really sure how i'd type it into the robots.txt file, or where to place the file.
any help would be appreciated thanks
-
Thanks for the detailed answer, i will give it a try!
-
Hi
This should do it, you place the robots.txt in the root directory of your site.
User-agent: * Disallow: /product-category/
You can check out some more examples here: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/robotstxt
As for the multiple urls linking to the same pages, you will just need to check all possible variants and make sure you have them covered in the robots.txt file.
Google webmaster tools has a page where you can use to check if the robots.txt file is doing what you expect it to do (under Health -> Blocked Urls).
It might be easier to block the pages with a meta tag as described in the link above if you are running a plugin allowing this, that should take care of all the different url structures also.
Hope that helps!
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
-
Can I replace categories with a static page
Hello there. I want to replace all of WordPress categories with static pages so that users see a well designed and constructed presentation of all the articles within each topic instead of just a long list of excerpts. I've already done this with 2 categories and although it is hard work I can't help feeling it is a much better thing for my users. However, I'm concerned that I am embarking on this project without being totally sure that it makes sense from an Seo point of view, or whether there are any downsides I haven't thought of? My idea is that the WordPress categories are set to noindex and nofollow. Search engines should find all of my static category pages and all of the content within each category will be spidered from there instead. Just to be sure you know what I mean here is a link to a normal category - https://www.whitegoodshelp.co.uk/category/consumer/ and here is my static page replacement for it - https://www.whitegoodshelp.co.uk/consumer-rights-appliances/ Both pages contain links to all articles within the category except the one generated by WordPress is just a long paginated list, and my replacement is a proper category page, which is hopefully far more useful . Can someone please confirm that there are no downsides to this strategy? 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | Snowdune1 -
Will it upset Google if I aggregate product page reviews up into a product category page?
We have reviews on our product pages and we are considering averaging those reviews out and putting them on specific category pages in order for the average product ratings to be displayed in search results. Each averaged category review would be only for the products within it's category, and all reviews are from users of the site, no 3rd party reviews. For example, averaging the reviews from all of our boxes products pages, and listing that average review on the boxes category page. My question is, will this be doing anything wrong in the eyes of Google, and if so how so? -Derick
On-Page Optimization | | Deluxe0 -
Content hidden behind a 'read all/more..' etc etc button
Hi Anyone know latest thinking re 'hidden content' such as body copy behind a 'read more' type button/link in light of John Muellers comments toward end of last year (that they discount hidden copy etc) & follow up posts on Search Engine Round Table & Moz etc etc ? Lots of people were testing it and finding such content was still being crawled & indexed so presumed not a big deal after all but if Google said they discount it surely we now want to reveal/unhide such body copy if it contains text important to the pages seo efforts. Do you think it could be the case that G is still crawling & indexing such content BUT any contribution that copy may have had to the pages seo efforts is now lost if hidden. So to get its contribution to SEO back one needs to reveal it, have fully displayed ? OR no need to worry and can keep such copy behind a 'read more' button/link ? All Best Dan
On-Page Optimization | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
How To Change Wordpress Category Title
My categories are indexed and I want to change the category page title. At present it just defaults to the category name but I want to set a different page title. For example I want the category to be 'Motor Cars' but I want the category page title to be 'Buy Motor Cars - New And Used'. How can I do this?
On-Page Optimization | | SamCUK0 -
State Abbreviations and/or Fully Spelled Out?
Should State names be abbreviated and/or fully spelled out in title tags, meta descriptions and body content? Does Google know that VT = Vermont?
On-Page Optimization | | lbohen0 -
Right way to block google robots from ppc landing pages
What is the right way to completely block seo robots from my adword landing pages? Robots.txt does not work really good for that, as far I know. Adding metatags noindex nofollow on the other side will block adwords robot as well. right? Thank you very much, Serge
On-Page Optimization | | Kotkov0 -
Best practice for Meta-Robots tag in categories and author pages?
For some of our site we use Wordpress, which we really like working with. The question I have is for the categories and authors pages (and similiar pages), i.e. the one looking: http://www.domain.com/authors/. Should you or should you not use follow, noindex for meta-robots? We have a lot of categories/tags/authors which generates a lot of pages. I'm a bit worried that google won't like this and leaning towards adding the follow, noindex. But the more I read about it, the more I see people disagree. What does the community of Seomoz think?
On-Page Optimization | | Lobtec0 -
Impact of removing category sidebar with keywords?
Our site (a niche financial publication: insideARM.com) requires some more room in the sidebar. We're considering removing the categories (we call them topics) sidebar block, or cutting down the number of items displayed within it. My concern is that we'd be removing a direct link to landing pages for important keyword terms from our most powerful page (the index). Sure, we have the terms listed in the footer, but I am worried that the position change will lower the value of the links. Our users don't really use these links for navigational purposes, which is why it comes up as a potential removed item. Am I wrong to worry about this? Would we be crippling our category pages by doing this?
On-Page Optimization | | insideARM0