Removing robots.txt on WordPress site problem
-
Hi..am a little confused since I ticked the box in WordPress to allow search engines to now crawl my site (previously asked for them not to) but Google webmaster tools is telling me I still have robots.txt blocking them so am unable to submit the sitemap.
Checked source code and the robots instruction has gone so a little lost. Any ideas please?
-
Hi,
I edited the robots.txt file for my website http://debtfreefrombankruptcy.com yesterday to allow search engines to crawl my site. However, Google isn't recognizing the new file and is still saying that my sitemap is blocked from search. Here is a link to the file itself:
http://www.debtfreefrombankruptcy.com/robots.txt
The Blocked URLs tester said that the file allows Google to crawl the site, but in actuality it still isn't recognizing the new file. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!
-
I can help you out as this issue DROVE ME NUTS.
1. I didnt have a Robots.txt (yet)
2. I had Yoast installed
3. Im pretty sure it created a Robots.txt even though it doesnt exist in my root (.com/here)
4. My Google webmaster tools shows this
User-agent: Disallow: /wp-admin/ Disallow: /wp-includes/ Disallow: /cgi-bin Disallow: /wp-admin Disallow: /wp-includes Disallow: /wp-content/plugins Disallow: /plugins Disallow: /wp-content/cache Disallow: /wp-content/themes Disallow: /trackback Disallow: /feed Disallow: /comments Disallow: /category//* Disallow: /trackback Disallow: /feed Disallow: /comments Disallow: /? Disallow: /?Allow: /wp-content/uploadsAllow: /assets Create a Robots.txt
1. login to wordpress 2. Click SEO in your side toolbar (Yoast WordPress Plugin settings) 3. Go to edit files under SEO (in the side toolbar)
And now you have the option to edit your Robots.txt file.
-
Hi Sophia
I just checked and see your homepage indexed in google.co.uk with a cache date of April 26th. You should be all set!
-Dan
-
Quick update - by amending the robots text file and switching sitemap plugin over to Yoast I finally got the sitemap to index without robots.txt warnings although the Home page of site was not indexed, 'oh dear'. 5 out of the 7 pages in the sitemap were indexed by Google so It's a start but some more investigating to be done on my side.
-
Dan,
Cant thank you enough! The sitemap request is still pending in Google - maybe I sent too many requests But it's time to sit back and wait for the good news hopefully. Thanks again.
-
Hi Sofia
I just ran the same validator on your sitemap and it went through fine - see screenshot
I intended to mean that you should just be sure Google Webmaster Tools accepts the sitemap as valid - if so, there's no need to run through a 3rd party validator. Apologies if I didn't state it clearly!
Let me know, but from what I can see it looks good!
-Dan
EDIT - Looking more closely, it looks like your ran the homepage through the validator - you would actually enter the sitemap address its self in the validator - http://containerforsale.co.uk/sitemap.xml
-
Hi Dan,
I followed the above advice and switched to the Yoast generated sitemap but after testing on http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/validate-xml-sitemap.html I got the following result - no idea what it means but it looks nasty...
Schema validating with XSV 3.1-1 of 2007/12/11 16:20:05Schema validator crashed
The maintainers of XSV will be notified, you don't need to
send mail about this unless you have extra information to provide.
If there are Schema errors reported below, try correcting
them and re-running the validation.Target: http://containerforsale.co.uk
(Real name: http://containerforsale.co.uk
Server: Apache/2.2.22 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.22 OpenSSL/0.9.8e-fips-rhel5 mod_bwlimited/1.4)The target was not assessedLow-level XML well-formedness and/or validity processing output
Warning: Undefined entity raquo
in unnamed entity at line 16 char 83 of http://containerforsale.co.uk
Warning: Undefined entity nbsp
in unnamed entity at line 160 char 10 of http://containerforsale.co.uk
Error: Expected ; after entity name, but got =
in unnamed entity at line 274 char 631 of http://containerforsale.co.u -
Sofia
You are using Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress, so use the XML sitemap within Yoast. You don't need a separate plugin for the XML sitemap. And yes, within Yoast turn the sitemap on.
Hope that helps!
-Dan
-
Indeed, thanks everyone - it's really appreciated!
I have updated the robots.txt as indicated and re submitted site map but looks like Google still has problems with my site since the error warning for robots is there after the processing is done.
Quick question - I am using a plugin called Google XML Sitemaps which has the following tick box option.
'Add sitemap URL to the virtual robots.txt file'.
The virtual robots.txt generated by WordPress is used. A real robots.txt file must NOT exist in the blog directory!'Should this box be ticked or un-ticked please? Fyi I currently don't have the box ticked.
-
Thanks guys for all the responses and helping!
Three Things to try
1.Fix Robots.txt
Sofia - I just checked your robots.txt now and it reads;
User-agent: * Disallow: Sitemap: http://containerforsale.co.uk/sitemap.xml.gz
- with the sitemap on the same line as disallow - I'd check on that and make sure its on a separate line.
- ALSO, you don't need the .gz on the sitemap file just sitemap.xml
2. Re-submit Sitemap
- RESUBMIT your sitemap to webmaster tools and make sure its valid.
3. Submit URL to Webmaster Tools (only last resort)
this is only last case scenario, shouldn't have to do this on the homepage if everything is correct.
- go to fetch as googlebot ->run the fetch ->then submit URL
- do this for the homepage
- see article on google blog for reference
Let us know if you're all set, thanks!
-Dan
-
Ok thanks Brent, I changed to
User-agent: *
Disallow:
Sitemap: http://containerforsale.co.uk/sitemap.xml.gz
Guess I will just have to wait for Google to refresh now...
-
yes, the urls being blocked are includes from your Wordpress program.
-
Thanks for the heads up.
The warning just says 7 Url''s blocked by robots.txt. - have seen this issue posted on the WordPress boards by others but no real insight into solutions.
Perhaps I should try your idea of
Change the robots.txt file to this:
User-agent *
Disallow:
-
Well there is a robots.txt file. You can view it here: http://containerforsale.co.uk/robots.txt
What warnings are you getting in your sitemap submission area? It appears to look alright: http://containerforsale.co.uk/sitemap.xml But I tried to validate it and got a 504 Gateway Time-out error. http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/index.php?op=validate-xml-sitemap&go=1&sitemapurl=http%3A%2F%2Fcontainerforsale.co.uk%2Fsitemap.xml&submit=Validate
-
Its weird, the front page warning on Google webmaster for robots has disappeared now, but still got the warnings in the sitemap submission area. My host suggests I just wait a bit longer for Google to update because he said same as you - that there doesn't seem to be any robot.txt file.
-
Doesn't appear to be blocked, so maybe it has something to do with your /wp-includes/ directory.
Change the robots.txt file to this:
User-agent *
Disallow:
-
Hey Guys,
Thanks for your replies...the domain is http://containerforsale.co.uk ,My host told me to look in the Public HTML file folder for the robots.txt file and just delete it but can't see it in there?
My host said he found a tester site and it doesn't report any issues:
http://www.searchenginepromotionhelp.com/m/robots-text-tester/robots-checker.php
This is the display I get from http://containerforsale.co.uk/robots.txt
User-agent *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/ -
Hi Sofia,
Two things you need to consider when troubleshooting this:
The actual robots.txt file (located in the root directory of your site) and the meta-robots tags in the section of your HTML. When you say you checked the source code and the robots instructions were missing, I think you were talking about the meta-robots tags in the actual HTML of your site.
Webmaster Tools is probably referring to the actual robots.txt file in your domain's root path, which would differ entirely and not be visible by checking the HTML on your site. Like Nakul and Brent said, if you'll let us know your site's URL and paste the content of your robots.txt file here, I'm sure one of us can help you resolve the problem fairly quickly.
Thanks!
Anthony
-
copy whatever you have in your robots.txt file here and we will tell you the issue.
SEOmoz has a great article about Robots.txt files here: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/robotstxt
-
The robots.txt would probably not be a part of the Wordpress Configuration. Allow indexing is controlled via Meta Data by the Wordpress Architecture.
I would look for something like this in yourdomain.com/robots.txt
disallow /
or something like that. If that does not help, PM me your site URL and I would be glad to look it up for you.
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
-
Does anyone know the linking of hashtags on Wix sites does it negatively or postively impact SEO. It is coming up as an error in site crawls 'Pages with 404 errors' Anyone got any experience please?
Does anyone know the linking of hashtags on Wix sites does it negatively or positively impact SEO. It is coming up as an error in site crawls 'Pages with 404 errors' Anyone got any experience please? For example at the bottom of this blog post https://www.poppyandperle.com/post/face-painting-a-global-language the hashtags are linked, but they don't go to a page, they go to search results of all other blogs using that hashtag. Seems a bit of a strange approach to me.
Technical SEO | | Mediaholix0 -
Help! added WWW to wordpress site and now lost SEO ranking
Hi there Everyone! I have recently added a www to my wordpress website by going to settings>general and adding "www" to the wordpress address and the site address. After i did that i lost my SEO ranking, and also that MOZ is detecting that im getting site crawl issues stating that i have duplicate pages. an example is below: http://www.mefco.co.nz/news http://mefco.co.nz/news any ideas on how to fix this?
Technical SEO | | jfactor0 -
Easy Question: regarding no index meta tag vs robot.txt
This seems like a dumb question, but I'm not sure what the answer is. I have an ecommerce client who has a couple of subdirectories "gallery" and "blog". Neither directory gets a lot of traffic or really turns into much conversions, so I want to remove the pages so they don't drain my page rank from more important pages. Does this sound like a good idea? I was thinking of either disallowing the folders via robot.txt file or add a "no index" tag or 301redirect or delete them. Can you help me determine which is best. **DEINDEX: **As I understand it, the no index meta tag is going to allow the robots to still crawl the pages, but they won't be indexed. The supposed good news is that it still allows link juice to be passed through. This seems like a bad thing to me because I don't want to waste my link juice passing to these pages. The idea is to keep my page rank from being dilluted on these pages. Kind of similar question, if page rank is finite, does google still treat these pages as part of the site even if it's not indexing them? If I do deindex these pages, I think there are quite a few internal links to these pages. Even those these pages are deindexed, they still exist, so it's not as if the site would return a 404 right? ROBOTS.TXT As I understand it, this will keep the robots from crawling the page, so it won't be indexed and the link juice won't pass. I don't want to waste page rank which links to these pages, so is this a bad option? **301 redirect: **What if I just 301 redirect all these pages back to the homepage? Is this an easy answer? Part of the problem with this solution is that I'm not sure if it's permanent, but even more importantly is that currently 80% of the site is made up of blog and gallery pages and I think it would be strange to have the vast majority of the site 301 redirecting to the home page. What do you think? DELETE PAGES: Maybe I could just delete all the pages. This will keep the pages from taking link juice and will deindex, but I think there's quite a few internal links to these pages. How would you find all the internal links that point to these pages. There's hundreds of them.
Technical SEO | | Santaur0 -
Is there any value in having a blank robots.txt file?
I've read an audit where the writer recommended creating and uploading a blank robots.txt file, there was no current file in place. Is there any merit in having a blank robots.txt file? What is the minimum you would include in a basic robots.txt file?
Technical SEO | | NicDale0 -
How to solve the meta : A description for this result is not available because this site's robots.txt. ?
Hi, I have many URL for commercialization that redirects 301 to an actual page of my companies' site. My URL provider say that the load for those request by bots are too much, they put robots text on the redirection server ! Strange or not? Now I have a this META description on all my URL captains that redirect 301 : A description for this result is not available because this site's robots.txt. If you have the perfect solutions could you share it with me ? Thank You.
Technical SEO | | Vale70 -
Robots.txt query
Quick question, if this appears in a clients robots.txt file, what does it mean? Disallow: /*/_/ Does it mean no pages can be indexed? I have checked and there are no pages in the index but it's a new site too so not sure if this is the problem. Thanks Karen
Technical SEO | | Karen_Dauncey0 -
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
Technical SEO | | languedoc
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:0 -
Robots.txt
My campaign hse24 (www.hse24.de) is not being crawled any more ... Do you think this can be a problem of the robots.txt? I always thought that Google and friends are interpretating the file correct, seen that he site was crawled since last week. Thanks a lot Bernd NB: Here is the robots.txt: User-Agent: * Disallow: / User-agent: Googlebot User-agent: Googlebot-Image User-agent: Googlebot-Mobile User-agent: MSNBot User-agent: Slurp User-agent: yahoo-mmcrawler User-agent: psbot Disallow: /is-bin/ Allow: /is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/WFS/HSE24-DE-Site/de_DE/-/EUR/hse24_Storefront-Start Allow: /is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/WFS/HSE24-AT-Site/de_DE/-/EUR/hse24_Storefront-Start Allow: /is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/WFS/HSE24-CH-Site/de_DE/-/CHF/hse24_Storefront-Start Allow: /is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/WFS/HSE24-DE-Site/de_DE/-/EUR/hse24_DisplayProductInformation-Start Allow: /is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/WFS/HSE24-AT-Site/de_DE/-/EUR/hse24_DisplayProductInformation-Start Allow: /is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/WFS/HSE24-CH-Site/de_DE/-/CHF/hse24_DisplayProductInformation-Start Allow: /is-bin/intershop.static/WFS/HSE24-Site/-/Editions/ Allow: /is-bin/intershop.static/WFS/HSE24-Site/-/Editions/Root%20Edition/units/HSE24/Beratung/
Technical SEO | | remino630