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.
Do I need a separate robots.txt file for my shop subdomain?
-
Hello Mozzers!
Apologies if this question has been asked before, but I couldn't find an answer so here goes...
Currently I have one robots.txt file hosted at https://www.mysitename.org.uk/robots.txt
We host our shop on a separate subdomain https://shop.mysitename.org.uk
Do I need a separate robots.txt file for my subdomain? (Some Google searches are telling me yes and some no and I've become awfully confused!
-
Thank you. I want to disallow specific URLs on the subdomain and add the shop sitemap in the robots.txt file. So I'll go ahead and create another!
-
You go be fine without one. You only need one if you want to manage that subdmain: add specific xml sitemaps links in robots.txt, cut access to specific folders for that subdomain.
if you don't need any of that - just move forward without one.
-
Currently we just have: User-agent: *
I'm in the process of optimising.
-
It depends what currently is in your robots.txt. Usually it would be useful to have another one for your subdomain.
-
Yes, I would have a seperate robots.txt files.
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
-
2 sitemaps on my robots.txt?
Hi, I thought that I just could link one sitemap from my site's robots.txt but... I may be wrong. So, I need to confirm if this kind of implementation is right or wrong: robots.txt for Magento Community and Enterprise ...
Technical SEO | | Webicultors
Sitemap: http://www.mysite.es/media/sitemap/es.xml
Sitemap: http://www.mysite.pt/media/sitemap/pt.xml Thanks in advance,0 -
How can I find my Webmaster Tools HTML file?
So, totally amateur hour here, but I can't for the life of me find our HTML verification file for webmaster tools. I see nowhere to look at it in Google Webmaster Tools console, I tried a site:, I googled it, all the info out there is about how to verify a site. Ours is verified, but I need the verification file code to sync up with the Google API and no one seems to have it. Any thoughts?
Technical SEO | | healthgrades0 -
Oh no googlebot can not access my robots.txt file
I just receive a n error message from google webmaster Wonder it was something to do with Yoast plugin. Could somebody help me with troubleshooting this? Here's original message Over the last 24 hours, Googlebot encountered 189 errors while attempting to access your robots.txt. To ensure that we didn't crawl any pages listed in that file, we postponed our crawl. Your site's overall robots.txt error rate is 100.0%. Recommended action If the site error rate is 100%: Using a web browser, attempt to access http://www.soobumimphotography.com//robots.txt. If you are able to access it from your browser, then your site may be configured to deny access to googlebot. Check the configuration of your firewall and site to ensure that you are not denying access to googlebot. If your robots.txt is a static page, verify that your web service has proper permissions to access the file. If your robots.txt is dynamically generated, verify that the scripts that generate the robots.txt are properly configured and have permission to run. Check the logs for your website to see if your scripts are failing, and if so attempt to diagnose the cause of the failure. If the site error rate is less than 100%: Using Webmaster Tools, find a day with a high error rate and examine the logs for your web server for that day. Look for errors accessing robots.txt in the logs for that day and fix the causes of those errors. The most likely explanation is that your site is overloaded. Contact your hosting provider and discuss reconfiguring your web server or adding more resources to your website. After you think you've fixed the problem, use Fetch as Google to fetch http://www.soobumimphotography.com//robots.txt to verify that Googlebot can properly access your site.
Technical SEO | | BistosAmerica0 -
Should I block robots from URLs containing query strings?
I'm about to block off all URLs that have a query string using robots.txt. They're mostly URLs with coremetrics tags and other referrer info. I figured that search engines don't need to see these as they're always better off with the original URL. Might there be any downside to this that I need to consider? Appreciate your help / experiences on this one. Thanks Jenni
Technical SEO | | ShearingsGroup0 -
Do I need an XML sitemap?
I have an established website that ranks well in Google. However, I have just noticed that no xml sitemap has been registered in Google webmaster tools, so the likelihood is that it hasn't been registered with the other search engines. However, there is an html sitemap listed on the website. Seeing as the website is already ranking well, do I still need to generate and submit an XML sitemap? Could there be any detriment to current rankings in doing so?
Technical SEO | | pugh0 -
OK to block /js/ folder using robots.txt?
I know Matt Cutts suggestions we allow bots to crawl css and javascript folders (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNEipHjsEPU) But what if you have lots and lots of JS and you dont want to waste precious crawl resources? Also, as we update and improve the javascript on our site, we iterate the version number ?v=1.1... 1.2... 1.3... etc. And the legacy versions show up in Google Webmaster Tools as 404s. For example: http://www.discoverafrica.com/js/global_functions.js?v=1.1
Technical SEO | | AndreVanKets
http://www.discoverafrica.com/js/jquery.cookie.js?v=1.1
http://www.discoverafrica.com/js/global.js?v=1.2
http://www.discoverafrica.com/js/jquery.validate.min.js?v=1.1
http://www.discoverafrica.com/js/json2.js?v=1.1 Wouldn't it just be easier to prevent Googlebot from crawling the js folder altogether? Isn't that what robots.txt was made for? Just to be clear - we are NOT doing any sneaky redirects or other dodgy javascript hacks. We're just trying to power our content and UX elegantly with javascript. What do you guys say: Obey Matt? Or run the javascript gauntlet?0 -
Robots.txt Sitemap with Relative Path
Hi Everyone, In robots.txt, can the sitemap be indicated with a relative path? I'm trying to roll out a robots file to ~200 websites, and they all have the same relative path for a sitemap but each is hosted on its own domain. Basically I'm trying to avoid needing to create 200 different robots.txt files just to change the domain. If I do need to do that, though, is there an easier way than just trudging through it?
Technical SEO | | MRCSearch0 -
Keywords in file names vs folder names
We understand the value of a keyword phrase included in the URL. Is there more value to having that phrase in the folder name of the URL or the file name or does it matter? Example: http://www.biztoolsone.com/website-design.php or http://www.biztoolsone.com/website-design/ Which is best? Thanks, Wick Smith
Technical SEO | | wcksmith0