Robots.txt crawling URL's we dont want it to
-
Hello
We run a number of websites and underneath them we have testing websites (sub-domains), on those sites we have robots.txt disallowing everything. When I logged into MOZ this morning I could see the MOZ spider had crawled our test sites even though we have said not to.
Does anyone have an ideas how we can stop this happening?
-
Hi there!
Thanks for reaching out to us! I am sorry if Roger is somehow not following your robots.txt directives. To ensure that Roger doesn't crawl your site you can put the following directive above your general directives in your robots.txt:
User-agent: rogerbot
Dissallow: /Once this is in place you should find our crawler to be a lot more obedient towards your site.
Hope this helps, please let us know if you have any more questions about our crawler.
Best,
Peter
Moz Help Team.
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
-
Multiple robots.txt files on server
Hi! I have previously hired a developer to put up my site and noticed afterwards that he did not know much about SEO. This lead me to starting to learn myself and applying some changes step by step. One of the things I am currently doing is inserting sitemap reference in robots.txt file (which was not there before). But just now when I wanted to upload the file via FTP to my server I found multiple ones - in different sizes - and I dont know what to do with them? Can I remove them? I have downloaded and opened them and they seem to be 2 textfiles and 2 dupplicates. Names: robots.txt (original dupplicate)
Technical SEO | | mjukhud
robots.txt-Original (original)
robots.txt-NEW (other content)
robots.txt-Working (other content dupplicate) Would really appreciate help and expertise suggestions. Thanks!0 -
Will a robots.txt disallow apply to a 301ed URL?
Hi there, I have a robots.txt query which I haven't tried before and as we're nearing a big time for sales, I'm hesitant to just roll out to live! Say for example, in my robots.txt I disallow the URL 'example1.html'. In reality, 'example1.html' 301s/302s to 'example2.html'. Would the robots.txt directive also apply to 'example2.html' (disallow) or as it's a separate URL, would the directive be ignored as it's not valid? I have a feeling that as it's a separate URL, the robots disallow directive won't apply. However, just thought I'd sense-check with the community.
Technical SEO | | ecommercebc0 -
Amazon Product Descriptions and our website's product descriptions
I am updating our product descriptions site-wide. I wanted to also update our amazon listings for those same products. Is that considered duplicate content if it would be on amazon and our site? Is there any reason why I wouldn't want to do that? Is google product ads also a problem?
Technical SEO | | EcomLkwd0 -
"Extremely high number of URLs" warning for robots.txt blocked pages
I have a section of my site that is exclusively for tracking redirects for paid ads. All URLs under this path do a 302 redirect through our ad tracking system: http://www.mysite.com/trackingredirect/blue-widgets?ad_id=1234567 --302--> http://www.mysite.com/blue-widgets This path of the site is blocked by our robots.txt, and none of the pages show up for a site: search. User-agent: * Disallow: /trackingredirect However, I keep receiving messages in Google Webmaster Tools about an "extremely high number of URLs", and the URLs listed are in my redirect directory, which is ostensibly not indexed. If not by robots.txt, how can I keep Googlebot from wasting crawl time on these millions of /trackingredirect/ links?
Technical SEO | | EhrenReilly0 -
IIS 7.5 - Duplicate Content and Totally Wrong robot.txt
Well here goes! My very first post to SEOmoz. I have two clients that are hosted by the same hosting company. Both sites have major duplicate content issues and appear to have no internal links. I have checked this both here with our awesome SEOmoz Tools and with the IIS SEO Tool Kit. After much waiting I have heard back from the hosting company and they say that they have "implemented redirects in IIS7.5 to avoid duplicate content" based on the following article: http://blog.whitesites.com/How-to-setup-301-Redirects-in-IIS-7-for-good-SEO__634569104292703828_blog.htm. In my mind this article covers things better: www.seomoz.org/blog/what-every-seo-should-know-about-iis. What do you guys think? Next issue, both clients (as well as other sites hosted by this company) have a robot.txt file that is not their own. It appears that they have taken one client's robot.txt file and used it as a template for other client sites. I could be wrong but I believe this is causing the internal links to not be indexed. There is also a site map, again not for each client, but rather for the client that the original robot.txt file was created for. Again any input on this would be great. I have asked that the files just be deleted but that has not occurred yet. Sorry for the messy post...I'm at the hospital waiting to pick up my bro and could be called to get him any minute. Thanks so much, Tiff
Technical SEO | | TiffenyPapuc0 -
Should we use & or and in our url's?
Example: /Zambia/kasanka-&-bangweulu or /Zambia/kasanka-and-bangweulu which is the better url from the search engines point of view?
Technical SEO | | tribes0 -
Robot.txt pattern matching
Hola fellow SEO peoples! Site: http://www.sierratradingpost.com robot: http://www.sierratradingpost.com/robots.txt Please see the following line: Disallow: /keycodebypid~* We are trying to block URLs like this: http://www.sierratradingpost.com/keycodebypid~8855/for-the-home~d~3/kitchen~d~24/ but we still find them in the Google index. 1. we are not sure if we need to specify the robot to use pattern matching. 2. we are not sure if the format is correct. Should we use Disallow: /keycodebypid*/ or /*keycodebypid/ or even /*keycodebypid~/? What is even more confusing is that the meta robot command line says "noindex" - yet they still show up. <meta name="robots" content="noindex, follow, noarchive" /> Thank you!
Technical SEO | | STPseo0 -
Site not being Indexed that fast anymore, Is something wrong with this Robots.txt
My wordpress site's robots.txt used to be this: User-agent: * Disallow: Sitemap: http://www.domainame.com/sitemap.xml.gz I also have all in one SEO installed and other than posts, tags are also index,follow on my site. My new posts used to appear on google in seconds after publishing. I changed the robots.txt to following and now post indexing takes hours. Is there something wrong with this robots.txt? User-agent: * Disallow: /cgi-bin Disallow: /wp-admin Disallow: /wp-includes Disallow: /wp-content/plugins Disallow: /wp-content/cache Disallow: /wp-content/themes Disallow: /wp-login.php Disallow: /wp-login.php Disallow: /trackback Disallow: /feed Disallow: /comments Disallow: /author Disallow: /category Disallow: */trackback Disallow: */feed Disallow: */comments Disallow: /login/ Disallow: /wget/ Disallow: /httpd/ Disallow: /*.php$ Disallow: /? Disallow: /*.js$ Disallow: /*.inc$ Disallow: /*.css$ Disallow: /*.gz$ Disallow: /*.wmv$ Disallow: /*.cgi$ Disallow: /*.xhtml$ Disallow: /? Disallow: /*?Allow: /wp-content/uploads User-agent: TechnoratiBot/8.1 Disallow: ia_archiverUser-agent: ia_archiver Disallow: / disable duggmirror User-agent: duggmirror Disallow: / allow google image bot to search all imagesUser-agent: Googlebot-Image Disallow: /wp-includes/ Allow: /* # allow adsense bot on entire siteUser-agent: Mediapartners-Google* Disallow: Allow: /* Sitemap: http://www.domainname.com/sitemap.xml.gz
Technical SEO | | ideas1230