Moz "Crawl Diagnostics" doesn't respect robots.txt
-
Hello, I've just had a new website crawled by the Moz bot. It's come back with thousands of errors saying things like:
- Duplicate content
- Overly dynamic URLs
- Duplicate Page Titles
The duplicate content & URLs it's found are all blocked in the robots.txt so why am I seeing these errors?
Here's an example of some of the robots.txt that blocks things like dynamic URLs and directories (which Moz bot ignored):Disallow: /?mode=
Disallow: /?limit=
Disallow: /?dir=
Disallow: /?p=*&
Disallow: /?SID=
Disallow: /reviews/
Disallow: /home/Many thanks for any info on this issue.
-
Hi Si, has this issue been resolved?
-
Hey Si,
Thanks for writing in. It doesn't seem that we are having an overarching issue with our crawler ignoring robots.txt files so I did some research in Google Webmaster Tools and it looks like most crawlers require an asterisk in the disallow directive to recognize that all pages of a dynamic URL are being disallowed. If you look in the "Pattern Matching" section of this resource here: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=156449, that should give you more information about setting up the robots.txt with the correct disallow directives to block those pages.
If you add in the astrisk to the disallow directive and you are still seeing these pages crawled, it would help if you sent in an email with your campaign information to our support desk at help@moz.com so we can have our engineers look into this more directly.
I hope this helps.
Chiaryn
-
If you have an "index,(no)follow" meta on those pages I think they will be crawled even though you have them blocked in robots.txt. So by adding "noindex" on those pages it might work as you want it to.
-
Is the / actually in the URL at that spot? Or is your link like http://www.example.com/abcd?p=147
If you give an example full URL that includes one of your blocked dynamic URLs we can take a better look. If your robots is setup correctly, it shouldn't find that stuff but give us more info if you're able.
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
-
Does Moz have a way to export full SERPs yet?
I don't like being restricted to tracking only three competitors' rankings so I'm wondering if I could just export the full SERPs like I can on Ahrefs and SEMrush.
Moz Bar | | QLP20040 -
How accurate is Moz Rank Tracker tool? It's showing different results than a Google incognito search.
I have a keyword/url combo with Moz Rank Tracker showing 3 spots above what a Google Incognito search showed. I performed my Google Incognito search based on these suggestions: https://moz.com/community/q/best-and-easiest-google-depersonalization-method Is the Moz Rank Tracker tool off?
Moz Bar | | chiefmoz1 -
What does the external links column mean in the crawl report , thanks
Hi, Ran a report for www.dare2b.com report, and it showing 34780 external links. What does this mean Thanks Jeff
Moz Bar | | jefffox0 -
Moz Pro Question: Does the amount of keywords you are allowed to search reset each month?
I am a Moz Pro subscriber and I really love the new Keyword Explorer tool. One question I have that I couldn't find a clear answer was regarding the number of monthly keyword queries. Do they reset each month? I hope they do.
Moz Bar | | joemaclean0 -
What does the Bold/ Strong mean in Moz bar?
Under On-Page Elements in the Moz bar there is a Tag/ Location called Bold/ Strong. What does that mean?
Moz Bar | | TiffanyatElite0 -
Does anyone have a good article or video on how to read the SEO MOZ crawl report column by column?
I am trying to find a good how-to on how to read and analyze each column of the SEO MOZ crawl report, specifically, the excel sheet it allows you to export. What I'm really trying to get to the bottom of is what the "Yes" indiciates under rel-cononical. If it says "yes," does this mean that the link in question has been canonoicalized?
Moz Bar | | armcwill0 -
Whats wrong with the typography of moz?
Seems moz is testing webfonts? On Chrome its hard to read not to say horrible. On FF its a little better.Or is this just on my computer?
Moz Bar | | inlinear0 -
Why isn't seo moz properly crawling my site?
In my campaign results, only 2 pages have been crawled, when there are many more. Also, when I do the on-page evaluation for my homepage and the main keyword, I get a grade of F, with a ton of errors that my page actually does not have. It's as if SEO moz is having trouble crawling through my site. Any ideas on this?
Moz Bar | | diplomajim0