Search Engine Blocked by Robot Txt warnings for Filter Search result pages--Why?
-
Hi,
We're getting 'Yellow' Search Engine Blocked by Robot Txt warnings for URLS that are in effect product search filter result pages (see link below) on our Magento ecommerce shop. Our Robot txt file to my mind is correctly set up i.e. we would not want Google to index these pages. So why does SeoMoz flag this type of page as a warning? Is there any implication for our ranking? Is there anything we need to do about this? Thanks.
Here is an example url that SEOMOZ thinks that the search engines can't see.
http://www.site.com/audio-books/audio-books-in-english?audiobook_genre=132
Below are the current entries for the robot.txt file.
User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /index.php/
Disallow: /?
Disallow: /.js$
Disallow: /.css$
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /tag/
Disallow: /catalogsearch/
Disallow: /review/
Disallow: /app/
Disallow: /downloader/
Disallow: /js/
Disallow: /lib/
Disallow: /media/
Disallow: /.php$
Disallow: /pkginfo/
Disallow: /report/
Disallow: /skin/
Disallow: /utm
Disallow: /var/
Disallow: /catalog/
Disallow: /customer/
Sitemap: -
Thanks Keri for your advice
-
Thanks Rick for your advice
-
Like Rick said, it's just a "hey, make sure that you really wanted to do this" type warning, since you can easily write a robots.txt that blocks things you didn't really think would be blocked. Or someone else can modify the robots.txt without telling you, and this can be a warning that you need to go find someone and get that fixed.
-
So what your saying is:
1. SEOmoz says these pages can't get indexed by search engines because of our robot.txt
2. We don't want these pages indexed and blocked them using robots.txt
My initial reaction is: no problem, SEOmoz is just showing you as a 'confirmation warning' that these pages are not indexed, but since you did that on purpose, it's okay.
Hope this 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
-
Parked domain is first in search results
We have several brand related domains which are parked and pointing to our main website. Some of these websites are redirecting using a 302 (don't ask, that's a whole other story), but these are being changed. But it shouldn't matter what type of redirect they are no? Since there has never been any traffic and they are not indexed? But it seems that one of them was indexed: exotravel.vn. A search for our brand name or the previous brand name (exotravel and exotissimo) brings up this parked domain first! How can that be? The domain has never been used and has no backlinks. exotravel.vn is redirecting and I submitted a change of address weeks ago to Google, but its still coming up first in all brand name searches for exotissimo or exotravel.
Technical SEO | | Exotissimo0 -
A few misc Webmaster tools questions & Robots.txt etc
Hi I have a few general misc questions re Robots.tx & GWT: 1) In the Robots.txt file what do the below lines block, internal search ? Disallow: /?
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence
Disallow: /*? 2) Also the sites feeds are blocked in robots.txt, why would you want to block a sites feeds ? **3) **What's the best way to deal with the below: - old removed page thats returning a 500 response code ? - a soft 404 for an old removed page that has no current replacement old removed pages returning a 404 The old pages didn't have any authority or inbound links hence is it best/ok to simply create a url removal request in GWT ? Cheers Dan0 -
Recovering from Blocked Pages Debaucle
Hi, per this thread: http://www.seomoz.org/q/800-000-pages-blocked-by-robots We had a huge number of pages blocked by robots.txt by some dynamic file that must have integrated with our CMS somehow. In just a few weeks hundreds of thousands of pages were "blocked." This number is now going down, but instead of by the hundreds of thousands, it is going down by the hundreds and very sloooooowwwwllly. So, we really need to speed up this process. We have our sitemap we will re-submit, but I have a few questions related to it: Previously the sitemap had the <lastmod>tag set to the original date of the page. So, all of these pages have been changed since then. Any harm in doing a mass change of the <lastmod>field? It would be an accurate reflection, but I don't want it to be caught by some spam catcher. The easy thing to do would be to just set that date to now, but then they would all have the same date. Any other tips on how to get these pages "unblocked" faster? Thanks! Craig</lastmod></lastmod>
Technical SEO | | TheCraig0 -
Bing search results
Hi I am getting little or no traffic via Bing. Why would this be? all my traffic is from Google and social media. my site is www.cocoonfxmedia.co.uk
Technical SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
Using Robots.txt
I want to Block or prevent pages being accessed or indexed by googlebot. Please tell me if googlebot will NOT Access any URL that begins with my domain name, followed by a question mark,followed by any string by using Robots.txt below. Sample URL http://mydomain.com/?example User-agent: Googlebot Disallow: /?
Technical SEO | | semer0 -
Why is an error page showing when searching our website using Google "site:" search function?
When I search our company website using the Google site search function "site:jwsuretybonds.com", a 400 Bad Request page is at the top of the listed pages. I had someone else at our company do the same site search and the 400 Bad Request did not appear. Is there a reason this is happening, and are there any ramifications to it?
Technical SEO | | TheDude0 -
Do search engines treat 307 redirects differently from 302 redirects?
We will need to send our users to an alternate version of our homepage for a few hours for a certain event. The SEO task at hand is to minimize the chance of the special homepage getting crawled and cached in the search engines in place of our normal homepage. (This has happened in the past so the concern is not imaginary.) Among other options, 302 and 307 redirects are being discussed. IE, redirecting www.domain.com to www.domain.com/specialpage. Having used 302s and 301s in the past, I am well aware of how search engines treat them. A 302 effectively says "Hey, Google! Please get rid of the old content on www.domain.com and replace it with the content on /specialpage!" Which is exactly what we don't want. My question is: do the search engines handle 307s any differently? I am hearing that the 307 does NOT result in the content of the second page being cached with the first URL. But I don't see that in the definition below (from w3.org). Then again, why differentiate it from the 302? 307 Temporary Redirect The requested resource resides temporarily under a different URI. Since the redirection MAY be altered on occasion, the client SHOULD continue to use the Request-URI for future requests. This response is only cacheable if indicated by a Cache-Control or Expires header field. The temporary URI SHOULD be given by the Location field in the response. Unless the request method was HEAD, the entity of the response SHOULD contain a short hypertext note with a hyperlink to the new URI(s) , since many pre-HTTP/1.1 user agents do not understand the 307 status. Therefore, the note SHOULD contain the information necessary for a user to repeat the original request on the new URI. If the 307 status code is received in response to a request other than GET or HEAD, the user agent MUST NOT automatically redirect the request unless it can be confirmed by the user, since this might change the conditions under which the request was issued.
Technical SEO | | CarsProduction0 -
How can i get the Authors photo to show in the Google search result?
I added the rel="author" tags to the blog posts last week and updated the authors page with a link to the Google+ account, but I have yet to see the authors photo surface in the Google Results. Example URL: http://spotlight.vitals.com/2011/10/dr-richelle-cooper-testifies-against-dr-conrad-murray-in-trial/ Can anyone identify what else needs to be done?
Technical SEO | | irvingw0