Issue with Robots.txt file blocking meta description
-
Hi,
Can you please tell me why the following error is showing up in the serps for a website that was just re-launched 7 days ago with new pages (301 redirects are built in)?
A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt – learn more.
Once we noticed it yesterday, we made some changed to the file and removed the amount of items in the disallow list.
Here is the current Robots.txt file:
# XML Sitemap & Google News Feeds version 4.2 - http://status301.net/wordpress-plugins/xml-sitemap-feed/ Sitemap: http://www.website.com/sitemap.xml Sitemap: http://www.website.com/sitemap-news.xml User-agent: * Disallow: /wp-admin/ Disallow: /wp-includes/ Other notes... the site was developed in WordPress and uses that followign plugins:
- WooCommerce All-in-One SEO Pack
- Google Analytics for WordPress
- XML Sitemap
- Google News Feeds
Currently, in the SERPs, it keeps jumping back and forth between showing the meta description for the www domain and showing the error message (above).
Originally, WP Super Cache was installed and has since been deactivated, removed from WP-config.php and deleted permanently.
One other thing to note, we noticed yesterday that there was an old xml sitemap still on file, which we have since removed and resubmitted a new one via WMT. Also, the old pages are still showing up in the SERPs.
Could it just be that this will take time, to review the new sitemap and re-index the new site?
If so, what kind of timeframes are you seeing these days for the new pages to show up in SERPs? Days, weeks? Thanks, Erin ```
-
At the moment, it doesn't seem that rel=publisher is doing all that much for sites (aside from sometimes showing better info ion the knowledge graph listing on Brand searches) but personally I believe it's functionality and influence are going to be greatly expanded fairly soon, so well worth doing. As far as it contributing anything to help speed up indexing... doubt it.
P.
-
Paul,
Thanks... you hit upon my hunch, that we will just have to wait.
Much of the information in the SERPs (metadescriptions, titles and urls) are still old,even though they redirect to the new pages when I click.
Thanks for the tip... and about social media.
Do you think it will help to get the rel=publisher link to the Google+ page on the site?
Erin
-
A lot of people, especially WP users use modules that may block certain spiders crawling your site, but in your case, you don't seem to have any.
-
If you just changed the robots.txt file yesterday, my guess is you're going to have to be patient while the site gets recrawled, Erin. Any of the pages that are in the index and were cached before yesterday's robots update will still include the directive not to include the metadescription (since that's the condition they were under when they were cached.)
I suspect the pages you're seeing with metadescriptions were crawled since the robots update. Are you seeing the same page change whether it shows metadescription or not?
As far as old pages showing in the SERPs, again they'll all have to be crawled before the 301 redirects can be discovered and the SEs can begin to understand they should be dropped. (Even then it can take days to weeks for the originals to drop out.)
Another very effective way to help get the new site indexed faster is to attract some good-quality new links to the new pages. Social Media can be especially effective for this, Google+ in particular.
Paul
-
Thanks!
What do I need to look for in the .htaccess file?
Here is what is there... and the rest (not shown) are redirects:
BEGIN WordPress <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule . /index.php [L]</ifmodule> # END WordPress
BEGIN WordPress <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule . /index.php [L]</ifmodule> # END WordPress
-
Thanks for the tips! Let me check it out.
-
I'd also insure its not something to do with your .htacess file.
-
Make sure the pages aren't blocked with meta robots noindex tag
Fetch as Google in WMT to request a full site recrawl.
Run brokenlinkcheck.com and see if their crawler is successfully crawling or if it's blocked.
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
-
Robots.txt advice
Hey Guys, Have you ever seen coding like this in a robots.txt, I have never seen a noindex rule in a robots.txt file before - have you? user-agent: AhrefsBot User-agent: trovitBot
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eLab_London
User-agent: Nutch
User-agent: Baiduspider
Disallow: / User-agent: *
Disallow: /WebServices/
Disallow: /*?notfound=
Disallow: /?list=
Noindex: /?*list=
Noindex: /local/
Disallow: /local/
Noindex: /handle/
Disallow: /handle/
Noindex: /Handle/
Disallow: /Handle/
Noindex: /localsites/
Disallow: /localsites/
Noindex: /search/
Disallow: /search/
Noindex: /Search/
Disallow: /Search/
Disallow: ? I have never seen a noindex rule in a robots.txt file before - have you?
Any pointers?0 -
What do you add to your robots.txt on your ecommerce sites?
We're looking at expanding our robots.txt, we currently don't have the ability to noindex/nofollow. We're thinking about adding the following: Checkout Basket Then possibly: Price Theme Sortby other misc filters. What do you include?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ThomasHarvey0 -
Utf-8 symbols in the Title or Meta Description?
Has somebody any experience (pros or cons) to using utf-8 symbols in the Title or in the Meta Description tags?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Yosef
Expedia uses it:
http://prntscr.com/74ofrv 74ofrv0 -
Duplicated Meta Descriptions on Dynamic Paginated Pages
If the title didn't put you off please read on! 🙂 According to our latest Moz Crawl Report we have circa 700 instances of duplicate Meta Description on pages that are both dynamically created and also paginated, however, I believe that number to be greater! We are unable to manual make changes to these pages (because they are dynamic) and so we need ask our web devs to create a change in how the Meta is created... If I am not making myself clear (and there is a good chance that I'm not!) then here is an example of what I mean; http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/cruise-deals/silversea-cruise-deals/ There are 92 pages of cruise deals for this particular operator with the results of each page having the option to sort by 4 categories; Recommended Cruise Price Sail Date Best Value 4 x 92 = 368 instances just for this one operator! The current Meta Desc is; A selection of the best Silversea cruise deals taking in over 800 destinations across all 7 continents. ...which isn't great I know! The problem is how to make each page (in each category) unique If any of you have incurred anything similar and have any kind of solution or recommendation then please respond - I would be most grateful! Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomKing0 -
JavaScript Issue? Google not indexing a microsite
We have a microsite that was created on our domain but is not linked to from ANYwhere EXCEPT within some Javascript elements on pages on our site. The link is in one JQuery slide panel. The microsite is not being indexed at all - when i do site:(microsite name) on Google, it doesn't return anything. I think it's because the link's only in a Java element, but my client assures me that if I submit to Google for crawling the problem will be solved. Maybe so, but my point is that if you just create a simple HTML link from at least one of our site pages, it will get indexed no problem. The microsite has been up for months and it's still not being indexed - another newer microsite that's been up for a few weeks and has simple links to it from our pages is indexing fine. I have submitted the URL for crawling but had to use the google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url/ method as I don't have access to the top level domain WMT account. p.s. when we put the microsite URL into the SEOBook spider-test tool it returns lots of lovely information - but that just tells me the page is findable, does exist, right? That doesn't mean Google's going to necessarily index it, as I am surmising...Moz hasn't found in the 5 months the microsite has been up and running. What's going on here?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jen_Floyd0 -
Having problems resolving duplicate meta descriptions
Recently, I’ve recommended to the team running one of our websites that we remove duplicate meta descriptions. The site currently has a large number of these and we’d like to conform to SEO best practice. I’ve seen Matt Cutt’s recent video entitled, ‘Is it necessary for every page to have a meta description’, where he suggests that webmasters use meta descriptions for their most tactically important pages, but that it is better to have no meta description than duplicates. The website currently has one meta description that is duplicated across the entire site. This seemed like a relatively straight forward suggestion but it is proving much more challenging to implement over a large website. The site’s developer has tried to resolve the meta descriptions, but says that the current meta description is a site wide value. It is possible to create 18 distinct replacements for 18 ‘template’ pages, but any sub-pages of these will inherit the value and create more duplicates. Would it be better to: Have no meta descriptions at all across the site? Stick with the status quo and have one meta description site-wide? Make 18 separate meta descriptions for the 18 most important pages, but still have 18 sets of duplicates across the sub-pages of the site. Or…is there a solution to this problem which would allow us to follow the best practice in Matt’s video? Any help would be much appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RG_SEO0 -
How to Disallow Tag Pages With Robot.txt
Hi i have a site which i'm dealing with that has tag pages for instant - http://www.domain.com/news/?tag=choice How can i exclude these tag pages (about 20+ being crawled and indexed by the search engines with robot.txt Also sometimes they're created dynamically so i want something which automatically excludes tage pages from being crawled and indexed. Any suggestions? Cheers, Mark
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | monster990 -
Yoast meta description in ' ' instead of " " problem
Hi Guys this is really strange, i am using yoast seo for wordpress on two sites. On both sites i am seeing meta name='description' instead of meta name="description" And this is why google is probably not reading it correctly, on many other link submission sites which read your meta data automatically say site blocked. How to i fix this? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamBuck0