undefined
Skip to content
Moz logo Menu open Menu close
  • Products
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Pro Home
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Home
    • STAT
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Home
    • Compare SEO Products
    • Moz Data
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis
    • Keyword Explorer
    • Link Explorer
    • Competitive Research
    • MozBar
    • More Free SEO Tools
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
    • SEO Learning Center
    • Moz Academy
    • SEO Q&A
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • Case Studies
    • The Moz Story
    • New Releases
  • Log in
  • Log out
  • Products
    • Moz Pro

      Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

    • Moz Local

      Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

    • STAT

      SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

    • Moz API

      Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

    • Compare SEO Products

      See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

    • Moz Data

      Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis

      Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

    • Keyword Explorer

      Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

    • Link Explorer

      Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

    • Competitive Research

      Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

    • MozBar

      See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

    • More Free SEO Tools

      Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO

      The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

    • SEO Learning Center

      Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

    • On-Demand Webinars

      Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

    • How-To Guides

      Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

    • Moz Academy

      Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

    • SEO Q&A

      Insights & discussions from an SEO community of 500,000+.

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
    Moz API

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

    Find your plan
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Small Business Solutions

      Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

    • Agency Solutions

      Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

    • Enterprise Solutions

      Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

    • The Moz Story

      Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

    • Case Studies

      Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

    • New Releases

      Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

    Surface actionable competitive intel
    New Feature

    Surface actionable competitive intel

    Learn More
  • Log in
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Dashboard
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Dashboard
    • Moz Academy
  • Avatar
    • Moz Home
    • Notifications
    • Account & Billing
    • Manage Users
    • Community Profile
    • My Q&A
    • My Videos
    • Log Out

The Moz Q&A Forum

  • Forum
  • Questions
  • Users
  • Ask the Community

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. Technical SEO
  4. Googlebot does not obey robots.txt disallow

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.

Googlebot does not obey robots.txt disallow

Technical SEO
4
12
3.1k
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as question
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
  • TalkInThePark
    TalkInThePark last edited by Nov 25, 2012, 12:13 PM

    Hi Mozzers!

    We are trying to get Googlebot to steer away from our internal search results pages by adding a parameter "nocrawl=1" to facet/filter links and then robots.txt disallow all URLs containing that parameter.

    We implemented this late august and since that, the GWMT message "Googlebot found an extremely high number of URLs on your site", stopped coming.

    But today we received yet another. The weird thing is that Google gives many of our nowadays robots.txt disallowed URLs as examples of URLs that may cause us problems.

    What could be the reason?

    Best regards,

    Martin

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • Cyrus-Shepard
      Cyrus-Shepard @TalkInThePark last edited by Nov 29, 2012, 3:52 AM Nov 29, 2012, 3:52 AM

      Sorry for the late reply. Feel free to send me a PM. (not sure I can help, but more than happy to take a look)

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • TalkInThePark
        TalkInThePark @TalkInThePark last edited by Nov 27, 2012, 7:38 AM Nov 27, 2012, 7:38 AM

        We do not currently have any sanitation rules in order to maintain the nocrawl param. But that is a good point. 301:ing will be difficult for us but I will definitely add the nocrawl param to the rel canonical of those internal SERPs.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • TalkInThePark
          TalkInThePark @Igal_Zeifman last edited by Nov 27, 2012, 7:32 AM Nov 27, 2012, 7:32 AM

          Thank you, Igol. I will definitely look into your first suggestion.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • TalkInThePark
            TalkInThePark @Cyrus-Shepard last edited by Nov 27, 2012, 7:28 AM Nov 27, 2012, 7:28 AM

            Thank you, Cyrus.

            This is what it looks like:

            User-agent: *
            Disallow: /nocrawl=1

            The weird thing is that when testing one of the sample URLs (given by Google as "problematic" in the GWMT message and that contains the nocrawl param) on the GWMT "Blocked URLs" page by entering the contents of our robots.txt and the sample URL, Google says crawling of the URL is disallowed for Googlebot.

            On the top of the same page, it says "Never" under the heading "Fetched when" (translated from Swedish..). But when i "Fetch as Google" our robots.txt, Googlebot has no problems fetching it. So i guess the "Never" information is due to a GWMT bug?

            I also tested our robots.txt against your recommended service http://www.frobee.com/robots-txt-check. It says all robots has access to the sample URL above, but I gather the tool is not wildcard-savvy.

            I will not disclose our domain in this context, please tell me if it is ok to send you a PW.

            About the noindex stuff. Basically, the nocrawl param is added to internal links pointing to internal search result pages filtered by more than two params. Although we allow crawling of less complicated internal serps, we disallow indexing of most of them by "meta noindex".

            Cyrus-Shepard 1 Reply Last reply Nov 29, 2012, 3:52 AM Reply Quote 0
            • Igal_Zeifman
              Igal_Zeifman @Cyrus-Shepard last edited by Nov 27, 2012, 5:18 AM Nov 27, 2012, 5:18 AM

              Thanks.

              100% agree with the Meta Noindex suggestion.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • Cyrus-Shepard
                Cyrus-Shepard last edited by Dec 8, 2012, 11:17 PM Nov 27, 2012, 2:00 AM

                It can be tricky blocking parameters with robots.txt. The first thing you want to do is make sure your are actually blocking the URLs. There are a few good robots.txt checkers out there that can help:

                • http://tool.motoricerca.info/robots-checker.phtml
                • http://www.frobee.com/robots-txt-check

                You're file is probably going to look something like:

                User-agent: *
                Disallow: /*?nocrawl=1

                ... but this could vary depending on exactly you don't want crawled

                +1 to Igal's suggestion of handling these via parameter settings in Google Webmaster Tools: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1235687

                Finally, if your goal is to keep search results out of the index (it probably should be) then you should also highly consider using a meta robots NOINDEX tag on all search results pages. You can also slap a nofollow on links pointing to search results as this might also help Google steer clear of those pages.

                Best of luck!

                Edit: Here's what John Wu of Google Webmaster has to say...

                "We show this warning when we find a high number of URLs on a site -- even before we attempt to crawl them. If you are blocking them with a robots.txt file, that's generally fine. If you really do have a high number of URLs on your site, you can generally ignore this message. If your site is otherwise small and we find a high number of URLs, then this kind of message can help you to fix any issues (or disallow access) before we start to access your server to check gazillions of URLs :-)."

                Igal_Zeifman TalkInThePark 2 Replies Last reply Nov 27, 2012, 7:28 AM Reply Quote 2
                • Igal_Zeifman
                  Igal_Zeifman @TalkInThePark last edited by Nov 27, 2012, 6:56 AM Nov 26, 2012, 1:02 PM

                  Didn't say it wasn't. 🙂

                  I`m just not sure how these rules apply to parameters, since they are not a part of the "core" URL.

                  (For example: What happens if I take a URL from your site, change a nocrawl=1 to nocrawl=0 and link to it from mine?
                  Do you have any URL sanitation rules in place to overcome that or will the page be indexed by Googlebot when it crawls my site and moves on to yours?)

                  Personally, when dealing with parameters, I find it easier to work with WMT so I was offering an easier workaround, (at least for me)

                  To tell you the truth, I would use hard-coded on page meta noindex/nofollow here (again, as parameters can be so easily manipulated).

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • TalkInThePark
                    TalkInThePark @Igal_Zeifman last edited by Nov 26, 2012, 12:53 PM Nov 26, 2012, 12:53 PM

                    Igal, thank your for replying.

                    But robots.txt disallowing URLs by matching patterns has been supported by Googlebot for a long time now.

                    Igal_Zeifman TalkInThePark 2 Replies Last reply Nov 27, 2012, 7:38 AM Reply Quote 0
                    • Igal_Zeifman
                      Igal_Zeifman last edited by Nov 26, 2012, 11:59 AM Nov 26, 2012, 11:59 AM

                      Hi

                      I`m not sure if this is the best way to go about it.

                      Robots.txt is commonly used for folder level disallow rules, I`m not sure how it will respond to parameters.

                      Having said that, there are several things you can do here:

                      1. You can use WMT to zero in on this parameter and  prevent it from being searched.
                      To do so choose Configuration>>URL Parameters, answer "Yes" to the question about content change and  
                          check-in the 3rd bullet (Only URL with value...) Of course you'll need to choose "1" as the right value.

                      2. If this still didn't solve your issue, you might want to try using htacess + regex to prevent access by user agent.
                          You can find user-agent information here Googlebot user agent list

                      Also, you may want to check my blog post  about some of the less known Googlebot Facts (shameless self-promotion)

                      Best

                      Igal

                      TalkInThePark 2 Replies Last reply Nov 27, 2012, 7:32 AM Reply Quote 1
                      • TalkInThePark
                        TalkInThePark @dmccarthy last edited by Nov 25, 2012, 3:31 PM Nov 25, 2012, 3:31 PM

                        I'll send you a PW, Des.

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • dmccarthy
                          dmccarthy last edited by Nov 25, 2012, 2:46 PM Nov 25, 2012, 2:46 PM

                          What the domain.?

                          TalkInThePark 1 Reply Last reply Nov 25, 2012, 3:31 PM Reply Quote 0
                          • 1 / 1
                          1 out of 12
                          • First post
                            1/12
                            Last post

                          Got a burning SEO question?

                          Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                          Start my free trial


                          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.

                          • See all categories

                          Related Questions

                          • Nomader

                            Crawl solutions for landing pages that don't contain a robots.txt file?

                            My site (www.nomader.com) is currently built on Instapage, which does not offer the ability to add a robots.txt file. I plan to migrate to a Shopify site in the coming months, but for now the Instapage site is my primary website. In the interim, would you suggest that I manually request a Google crawl through the search console tool? If so, how often? Any other suggestions for countering this Meta Noindex issue?

                            Technical SEO | May 2, 2019, 3:41 AM | Nomader
                            1
                          • sjbridle

                            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!

                            Technical SEO | Sep 6, 2016, 11:16 AM | sjbridle
                            0
                          • EcommerceSite

                            Do I need to block my cart page in robots.txt?

                            I have a site with woocommerce. Do I need to block the cart page?

                            Technical SEO | Mar 6, 2015, 5:36 PM | EcommerceSite
                            0
                          • hammadrafique

                            Blocked jquery in Robots.txt, Any SEO impact?

                            I've heard that Google is now indexing links and stuff available in javascript and jquery. My webmastertools is showing that some links are blocked in robots.txt of jquery. Sorry I'm not a developer or designer. I want to know is there any impact of this on my SEO? and also how can I unblock it for the robots? Check this screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/3VDWikC.png

                            Technical SEO | Oct 15, 2014, 8:05 AM | hammadrafique
                            0
                          • lzhao

                            Temporarily suspend Googlebot without blocking users

                            We'll soon be launching a redesign, on a new platform, migrating millions of pages to new URLs. How can I tell Google (and other crawlers) to temporarily (a day or two) ignore my site?  We're hoping to buy ourselves a small bit of time to verify redirects and live functionality before allowing Google to crawl and index the new architecture. GWT's recommendation is to 503 all pages - including robots.txt, but that also makes the site invisible to real site visitors, resulting in significant business loss.  Bad answer. I've heard some recommendations to disallow all user agents in robots.txt.   Any answer that puts the millions of pages we already have indexed at risk is also a bad answer. Thanks

                            Technical SEO | Aug 21, 2012, 11:52 AM | lzhao
                            0
                          • ShearingsGroup

                            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 | Aug 9, 2012, 1:05 PM | ShearingsGroup
                            0
                          • Nightwing

                            Does Bing ignore robots txt files?

                            Bonjour from "Its a miracle is not raining" Wetherby Uk 🙂 Ok here goes... Why despite a robots text file excluding indexing to site http://lewispr.netconstruct-preview.co.uk/ is the site url being indexed in Bing bit not Google? Does bing ignore robots text files or is there something missing from http://lewispr.netconstruct-preview.co.uk/robots.txt I need to add to stop bing indexing a preview site as illustrated below. http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/preview-bing-indexed.jpg Any insights welcome 🙂

                            Technical SEO | Jul 20, 2012, 5:35 AM | Nightwing
                            0
                          • Wallander

                            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?

                            Technical SEO | Mar 21, 2013, 12:50 PM | Wallander
                            0

                          Get started with Moz Pro!

                          Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                          Start my free trial
                          Products
                          • Moz Pro
                          • Moz Local
                          • Moz API
                          • Moz Data
                          • STAT
                          • Product Updates
                          Moz Solutions
                          • SMB Solutions
                          • Agency Solutions
                          • Enterprise Solutions
                          Free SEO Tools
                          • Domain Authority Checker
                          • Link Explorer
                          • Keyword Explorer
                          • Competitive Research
                          • Brand Authority Checker
                          • Local Citation Checker
                          • MozBar Extension
                          • MozCast
                          Resources
                          • Blog
                          • SEO Learning Center
                          • Help Hub
                          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                          • How-to Guides
                          • Moz Academy
                          • API Docs
                          About Moz
                          • About
                          • Team
                          • Careers
                          • Contact
                          Why Moz
                          • Case Studies
                          • Testimonials
                          Get Involved
                          • Become an Affiliate
                          • MozCon
                          • Webinars
                          • Practical Marketer Series
                          • MozPod
                          Connect with us

                          Contact the Help team

                          Join our newsletter
                          Moz logo
                          © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                          • Accessibility
                          • Terms of Use
                          • Privacy

                          Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.