Google: How to See URLs Blocked by Robots?
-
Google Webmaster Tools says we have 17K out of 34K URLs that are blocked by our Robots.txt file.
How can I see the URLs that are being blocked?
Here's our Robots.txt file.
User-agent: * Disallow: /swish.cgi Disallow: /demo Disallow: /reviews/review.php/new/ Disallow: /cgi-audiobooksonline/sb/order.cgi Disallow: /cgi-audiobooksonline/sb/productsearch.cgi Disallow: /cgi-audiobooksonline/sb/billing.cgi Disallow: /cgi-audiobooksonline/sb/inv.cgi Disallow: /cgi-audiobooksonline/sb/new_options.cgi Disallow: /cgi-audiobooksonline/sb/registration.cgi Disallow: /cgi-audiobooksonline/sb/tellfriend.cgi Disallow: /*?gdftrk
-
It seems you might be asking two different questions here, Larry.
You ask which URLs are blocked by your robots file. You then answered your own question by listing the entries in your robots file which are the actual URLs that it is blocking.
If in fact what you want to know is which pages exist on your website but are not currently indexed, that's a much bigger question and requires a lot more work to answer.
There is no way Webmaster Tools can give you that answer, because if it was aware of the URL it would already be indexing it.
HOWEVER! It is possible to do it if you are willing to do some of the work on your own to collect and manipulate data using several tools. Essentially, you have to do it in three steps:
- create a list of all the URLs that Google says are indexed. (This info comes from Google's SERPs.)
- then create a separate list of all of the URLs that actually exist on your website. (This must come from a 3rd-party tool you run against your site yourself.)
- From there, you will use Excel to subtract the indexed URLs from the known URLs, leaving a list of non-indexed URLS, which is what you asked for.
I actually laid out this process step-by-step in response to an earlier question, so you can read the process there http://www.seomoz.org/q/how-to-determine-which-pages-are-not-indexed
Is that what you were looking for?
Paul
-
Okay, well the robots.txt will only be excluding robots from the folders and URLs specified and as I say, there's no way to download a list of all the URLs that Google is not indexing from webmaster tools.
If you have exact URLs in mind which you think might be getting excluded, you can test individual URLs in Google Webmaster Tools in:
Health > Blocked URLs > URLs Specify the URLs and user-agents to test against.
Beyond this, if you want to know if there are URLs that shouldn't be excluded in the folders you have specified, I would run a crawl of your website using SEOMoz' crawl test or Screaming Frog. Then sort the URLs alphabetically and make sure that all of the URLs in the folders you have excluded via robots.txt are ones that you want to exclude.
-
I want to make sure that Google is indexing all of our pages we want them to. I.E. That all of the NOT indexed URLs are valid.
-
Hi Larry
Why do you want to find those URLs out for my understanding? Are you concerned that the robots.txt is blocking URLs it shouldn't be?
As for downloading a list of URLs which aren't indexed from Google Webmaster Tools, which is what I think you would really like, this isn't possible at the moment.
-
Liz; Perhaps my post was unclear or I am misunderstanding your answer.
I want to find out the specific URLs that Google says it isn't indexing because of our Robots.txt file.
-
If you want to see if Google has indexed individual pages which are supposed to be excluded, you can check the URLs in your robots.txt using the site: command.
E.g. type the following into Google:
site:http://www.audiobooksonline.com/swish.cgi
site:http://www.audiobooksonline.com/reviews/review.php/new/
...continue for all the URLs in your robots.txtJust from searching on the last example above (site:http://www.audiobooksonline.com/reviews/review.php/new/) I can see that you have results indexed. This is probably because you added the robots.txt after it was already indexed.
To get rid of these results you need to take the culprit line out of the robots.txt, add the robots meta tag set to noindex to all pages you want removed, submit a URL removal request via webmaster tools, check it has been nonidexed then you can add the line back into the robots.txt.
This is the tag:
I hope that makes sense and is useful!
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
-
Canonical URL's searchable in Google?
Hi - we have a newly built site using Drupal, and Drupal likes to create canonical tags on pretty much everything, from their /node/ url's to the URL Alias we've indicated. Now, when I pull a moz crawl report, I get a huge list of all the /node/ plus other URL's. That's beside the point though... Question: when I directly enter one of the /node/ url's into a google search, a result is found. Clicking on it redirects to the new URL, but should Google even be finding these non-canonical URL's?? I don't feel like I've seen this before.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jenny10 -
I'm noticing that URL that were once indexed by Google are suddenly getting dropped without any error messages in Webmasters Tools, has anyone seen issues like this before?
I'm noticing that URLs that were once indexed by Google are suddenly getting dropped without any error messages in Webmasters Tools, has anyone seen issues like this before? Here's an example:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nystromandy
http://www.thefader.com/2017/01/11/the-carter-documentary-lil-wayne-black-lives-matter0 -
How can I make a list of all URLs indexed by Google?
I started working for this eCommerce site 2 months ago, and my SEO site audit revealed a massive spider trap. The site should have been 3500-ish pages, but Google has over 30K pages in its index. I'm trying to find a effective way of making a list of all URLs indexed by Google. Anyone? (I basically want to build a sitemap with all the indexed spider trap URLs, then set up 301 on those, then ping Google with the "defective" sitemap so they can see what the site really looks like and remove those URLs, shrinking the site back to around 3500 pages)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bryggselv.no0 -
Website using search term as URL brand name to cheat Google
Google has come a long way over the past 5 years, the quality updates have really helped bring top quality content to the top that is relevant for users search terms, although there is one really ANNOYING thing that still has not been fixed. Websites using brand name as service search term to manipulate Google I have got a real example but I wouldn't like to use it in case the brand mentions flags up in their tools and they spot this post, but take this search for example "Service+Location" You will get 'service+location.com' rank #1 Why? Heaven knows. They have less than 100 backlinks which are of a very low, spammy quality from directories. The content is poor compared to the competition and the competitors have amazing link profiles, great social engagement, much better website user experience and the data does not prove anything. All the competitors are targeting the same search term but yet the worst site is ranking the highest. Why on earth is Google not fixing this issue. This page we are seeing rank #1 do not even deserve to be ranking on the first 5 pages.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jseddon920 -
Can Google read content/see links on subscription sites?
If an article is published on The Times (for example), can Google by-pass the subscription sign-in to read the content and index the links in the article? Example: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/life/property/overseas/article4245346.ece In the above article there is a link to the resort's website but you can't see this unless you subscribe. I checked the source code of the page with the subscription prompt present and the link isn't there. Is there a way that these sites deal with search engines differently to other user agents to allow the content to be crawled and indexed?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CustardOnlineMarketing0 -
Link from Google.com
Hi guys I've just seen a website get a link from Google's Webmaster Snippet testing tool. Basically, they've linked to a results page for their own website test. Here's an example of what this would look like for a result on my website. http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.impression.co.uk There's a meta nofollow, but I just wondered what everyone's take is on Trust, etc, passing down? (Don't worry, I'm not encouraging people to go out spamming links to results pages!) Looking forward to some interesting responses!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tomcraig860 -
Website Displayed by Google as Https: when all Secure Content is Blocked - Causing Index Prob.
Basically, I have no inbound likes going to https://www.mysite.com , but google is indexing the Homepage only as https://www.mysite.com In June, I was re included to the google index after receiving a penalty... Most of my site links recovered fairly well. However my homepage did not recover for its top keywords. Today I notice that when I search for my site, its displayed as https:// Robots.txt blocks all content going to any secure page. Leaving me sort of clueless what I need to do to fix this. Not only does it pose a problem for some users who click, but I think its causing the homepage to have an indexing problem. Any ideas? Redirect the google bot only? Will a canonical tag fix this? Thx
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Southbay_Carnivorous_Plants0 -
Link to Google Places, or Google Maps?
On our contact page, we offer a link to view Google Maps for directions. I'm wondering should we be linking to our Google Places page instead, or just stick with the Google Map link? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GravitateMCC0