Robots.txt Allowed
-
Hello all,
We want to block something that has the following at the end:
http://www.domain.com/category/product/some+demo+-text-+example--writing+here
So I was wondering if doing:
/*example--writing+here
would work?
-
Yes, that should work just fine. As Logan mentioned, I recommend you test it in the robots.txt testing tool in Google Search Console.
-
Yes, that would work. I'm sure everyone already knows that if in case you have a product that has the word example at the end of URL, it would block that too. A little off tangent here but blocking in robots.txt does not mean that every single spiders out there is going to honor this rule. The major ones like Google Spiders does honor this. Also, it doesn't mean that the URL won't be indexed. Sorry for the long winded answer but just make sure that if this is truly an example or demo page that you don't want search engines to index to make sure that you include "noindex, nofollow" in the metainfo.
I agree with Logan Ray. In case you want the "Robots TXT" Tester, you can google it "Robots Txt Tester" and the first one should be from support.google.com
-
Hi Thomas,
That should work. You can confirm this by modifying your robots.txt file in Search Console and testing a handful of URLs to ensure they're blocked the way you want.
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
-
SEO Best Practices regarding Robots.txt disallow
I cannot find hard and fast direction about the following issue: It looks like the Robots.txt file on my server has been set up to disallow "account" and "search" pages within my site, so I am receiving warnings from the Google Search console that URLs are being blocked by Robots.txt. (Disallow: /Account/ and Disallow: /?search=). Do you recommend unblocking these URLs? I'm getting a warning that over 18,000 Urls are blocked by robots.txt. ("Sitemap contains urls which are blocked by robots.txt"). Seems that I wouldn't want that many urls blocked. ? Thank you!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jamiegriz0 -
This url is not allowed for a Sitemap at this location error using pro-sitemaps.com
Hey, guys, We are using the pro-sitemaps.com tool to automate our sitemaps on our properties, but some of them give this error "This url is not allowed for a Sitemap at this location" for all the urls. Strange thing is that not all of them are with the error and most have all the urls indexed already. Do you have any experience with the tool and what is your opinion? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lgrozeva0 -
SSL and robots.txt question - confused by Google guidelines
I noticed "Don’t block your HTTPS site from crawling using robots.txt" here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/https-as-ranking-signal.html Does this mean you can't use robots.txt anywhere on the site - even parts of a site you want to noindex, for example?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Whole site blocked by robots in webmaster tools
My URL is: www.wheretobuybeauty.com.auThis new site has been re-crawled over last 2 weeks, and in webmaster tools index status the following is displayed:Indexed 50,000 pagesblocked by robots 69,000Search query 'site:wheretobuybeauty.com.au' returns 55,000 pagesHowever, all pages in the site do appear to be blocked and over the 2 weeks, the google search query site traffic declined from significant to zero (proving this is in fact the case ).This is a Linux php site and has the following: 55,000 URLs in sitemap.xml submitted successfully to webmaster toolsrobots.txt file existed but did not have any entries to allow or disallow URLs - today I have removed robots.txt file completely URL re-direction within Linux .htaccess file - there are many rows within this complex set of re-directions. Developer has double checked this file and found that it is valid.I have read everything that google and other sources have on this topic and this does not help. Also checked webmaster crawl errors, crawl stats, malware and there is no problem there related to this issue.Is this a duplicate content issue - this is a price comparison site where approx half the products have duplicate product descriptions - duplicated because they are obtained from the suppliers through an XML data file. The suppliers have the descriptions from the files in their own sites.Help!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rrogers0 -
Robots.txt error message in Google Webmaster from a later date than the page was cached, how is that?
I have error messages in Google Webmaster that state that Googlebot encountered errors while attempting to access the robots.txt. The last date that this was reported was on December 25, 2012 (Merry Christmas), but the last cache date was November 16, 2012 (http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Awww.etundra.com/robots.txt&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a). How could I get this error if the page hasn't been cached since November 16, 2012?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eTundra0 -
Files blocked in robot.txt and seo
I use joomla and I have blocked the following in my robots.txt is there anything that is bad for seo ? User-agent: * Disallow: /administrator/ Disallow: /cache/ Disallow: /components/ Disallow: /images/ Disallow: /includes/ Disallow: /installation/ Disallow: /language/ Disallow: /libraries/ Disallow: /media/ Disallow: /modules/ Disallow: /plugins/ Disallow: /templates/ Disallow: /tmp/ Disallow: /xmlrpc/ Disallow: /mailto:myemail@myemail.com/ Disallow: /javascript:void(0) Disallow: /.pdf
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Does It Really Matter to Restrict Dynamic URLs by Robots.txt?
Today, I was checking Google webmaster tools and found that, there are 117 dynamic URLs are restrict by Robots.txt. I have added following syntax in my Robots.txt You can get more idea by following excel sheet. #Dynamic URLs Disallow: /?osCsidDisallow: /?q= Disallow: /?dir=Disallow: /?p= Disallow: /*?limit= Disallow: /*review-form I have concern for following kind of pages. Shorting by specification: http://www.vistastores.com/table-lamps?dir=asc&order=name Iterms per page: http://www.vistastores.com/table-lamps?dir=asc&limit=60&order=name Numbering page of products: http://www.vistastores.com/table-lamps?p=2 Will it create resistance in organic performance of my category pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit0 -
Old pages still crawled by SE returning 404s. Better to put 301 or block with robots.txt ?
Hello guys, A client of ours has thousand of pages returning 404 visibile on googl webmaster tools. These are all old pages which don't exist anymore but Google keeps on detecting them. These pages belong to sections of the site which don't exist anymore. They are not linked externally and didn't provide much value even when they existed What do u suggest us to do: (a) do nothing (b) redirect all these URL/folders to the homepage through a 301 (c) block these pages through the robots.txt. Are we inappropriately using part of the crawling budget set by Search Engines by not doing anything ? thx
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | H-FARM0