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: /?
-
Not sure if that would work, but you can test by changing your robots.txt and running a test in GWT > Health > Blocked URLs
You might also be interested in specifying specific URL paraments (e.g. /?sort=name&order=asc > can block sort and order parameters) from within GWT (Configuration > URL Parameters)
Learn more about parameters - https://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1235687
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
-
Using a 302 redirect for language variants. How should I use the canonical?
Hi there, I have a question regarding the canonical tag. The current setup is like so... www.site.com 302 redirects to.. www.site.com/de/ I want to add canonical tags on every page to avoid duplicate content but I'm not sure about the homepage. Should the canonical URL be www.site.com or www.site.com/de/ ? I'm concerned that I could be about to hurt my ranking. Thanks,
Technical SEO | | zuriwolf
Mitch0 -
Duplicate content: using the robots meta tag in conjunction with the canonical tag?
We have a WordPress instance on an Apache subdomain (let's say it's blog.website.com) alongside our main website, which is built in Angular. The tech team is using Akamai to do URL rewrites so that the blog posts appear under the main domain (website.com/more-keywords/here). However, due to the way they configured the WordPress install, they can't do a wildcard redirect under htaccess to force all the subdomain URLs to appear as subdirectories, so as you might have guessed, we're dealing with duplicate content issues. They could in theory do manual 301s for each blog post, but that's laborious and a real hassle given our IT structure (we're a financial services firm, so lots of bureaucracy and regulation). In addition, due to internal limitations (they seem mostly political in nature), a robots.txt file is out of the question. I'm thinking the next best alternative is the combined use of the robots meta tag (no index, follow) alongside the canonical tag to try to point the bot to the subdirectory URLs. I don't think this would be unethical use of either feature, but I'm trying to figure out if the two would conflict in some way? Or maybe there's a better approach with which we're unfamiliar or that we haven't considered?
Technical SEO | | prasadpathapati0 -
Am I using pagination markups correctly?
Hey Mozzers! I am receiving duplicate title tag errors from Search Console on paginated pages (blog.com/chlorine, blog.com/chlorine-2, blog.com/chlorine-3). I do not currently have a view all page. If I were to create one, would I add all the content from chlorine-2 and chlorine-3 to the blog.com/chlorine page? Then use the rel=cononical on chlorine-2 and chlorine-3 to blog.com/chlorine? If I move forward without the view all page, I could implement the next/prev HTML markups but can I do this without dev help? I am currently using the Yoast SEO plugin and do not see the option. Would I use the text editor to add the markups directly before the content? I think I have a grasp on this, but this will be my first time implementing and I want to double check first! Thanks!
Technical SEO | | localwork0 -
Google is indexing blocked content in robots.txt
Hi,Google is indexing some URLs that i don't want to be indexed and also is indexing the same URLs with https. This URLs are blocked in the file robots.txt.I've tried to block this URLs through Google WebmasterTools but Google doesn't let me do it because this URL are httpsThe file robots.txt is correct so, what can i do to avoid this content to be indexed?
Technical SEO | | elisainteractive0 -
Should I use canonical?
I'm working on a site that sells audio tracks, the site is a Wordpress build. I've got Yoast and XML Sitemaps running for SEO. The site has been developed (not by myself) to use a flash based audio player. Now this player offers the ability to share, sell products etc... The player has been placed on the homepage and the main music catalog page. The main catalog page has had a custom page type created for itself. This page has been created in such a way that if you visit the actual page from dashboard > Pages and add content then no content will appear on the page. Even the page header is pulled from the PHP. So really as far as I am aware no real content is being seen on the page by a search engine. Except the content on the side bars (it has 2 sidebars on either side of the page.) The homepage has an introductory paragraph and header which are editable via the normal method in Wordpress. A custom post type has been created specifically for music items. When a music item is uploaded it is added to the music item feed on the homepage and music catalog pages. It also creates a separate post for the item itself. These items at the moment also have 'no content' as they are only sidebars with a flash music player. I've started to add short paragraphs and headers to them so there is content on the music item posts. I cannot however, in the time frame/budget start entering deeply descriptive content about each item. (I considered adding the intro paragraph from the homepage and using a canonical tag to the homepage on every music item). So here is my question. What do I do with these music items? Do I use canonical and point them toward the music catalog or the homepage? If so which one? I want the homepage or music catalog page to rank well and I am concerned that search engines aren't going to see these most vital parts of the site. I don't think individual items ranking is helpful, so what do i do?!?! The home and catalog pages are the two main pages of the site. I am going to advise a new player, page type etc... be utilised but at the moment I need a solution quickly. Any help will be much appreciated.
Technical SEO | | benyamin0 -
Which one should I use Schema.org or Microformats.org
Hi, I would like to know which one is better to use Schema.org or Microformats.org My CMS doesn't support Schema.org attributes, I can only use Microformats.org documentation, but I wanted to knwo if Schema.org is better one, so I will change my CMS and use another one.
Technical SEO | | FisnikSylka0 -
Block or remove pages using a robots.txt
I want to use robots.txt to prevent googlebot access the specific folder on the server, Please tell me if the syntax below is correct User-Agent: Googlebot Disallow: /folder/ I want to use robots.txt to prevent google image index the images of my website , Please tell me if the syntax below is correct User-agent: Googlebot-Image Disallow: /
Technical SEO | | semer0 -
Can the Breadcrumb Trail be used as the H1 tag?
We hace recently discovered that the x-cart sites we have dont have H1 tags. Can the breadcrumb trail on the category and sub category pages be used as the H1 tag?
Technical SEO | | heathshowman0