Description tag not showing in the SERPs because page is blocked by Robots, but the page isn't blocked. Any help?
-
While checking some SERP results for a few pages of a site this morning I noticed that some pages were returning this message instead of a description tag,
A description for this result is not avaliable because of this site's robot.s.txt
The odd thing is the page isn't blocked in the Robots.txt. The page is using Yoast SEO Plugin to populate meta data though.
Anyone else had this happen and have a fix?
-
I am having the same issue currently with one of my clients sites. No robots.txt is or was ever in place. I can not find any issues at all that would cause the problem. Was wondering if you every had any resolution to this? Client also uses Yoast.
-
Hi there! Has this issue been resolved? We'd love to have an update, thanks! (Christy)
-
Could the pages have been blocked in robotos.txt in the past? It can take an age for Google to re-index pages a proper after having been blocked previously.
-
Certainly doesn't appear to be any issues there. It's difficult to determine the issue without taking a look closer but its not the robots.txt file and if your site is fully indexed then I can't offer more without seeing the site.
Would you be willing to share the URL?
-
No, it's not on. The site is indexed, just certain description tags aren't.
-
It's pretty standard
User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/
-
I've seen people with similar issues before and it's been a small but fatal error in the robots.txt file itself. Can you please share it here and I'll advise further if needed.
-
Can you check something for me please?
Log in to wp-admin
Go to Setting then Privacy
Check if “Ask search engines not to index this site.” is set to ON
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
-
Help recover lost traffic (70%) from robots.txt error.
Our site is a company information site with 15 million indexed pages (mostly company profiles). Recently we had an issue with a server that we replaced, and in the processes mistakenly copied the robots.txt block from the staging server to a live server. By the time we realized the error, we lost 2/3 of our indexed pages and a comparable amount of traffic. Apparently this error took place on 4/7/19, and was corrected two weeks later. We have submitted new sitemaps to Google and asked them to validate the fix approximately a week ago. Given the close to 10 million pages that need to be validated, so far we have not seen any meaningful change. Will we ever get this traffic back? How long will it take? Any assistance will be greatly appreciated. On another note, these indexed pages were never migrated to SSL for fear of losing traffic. If we have already lost the traffic and/or if it is going to take a long time to recover, should we migrate these pages to SSL? Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | akin671 -
Missing canonical tag error - office pages
Moz is throwing an error for our office pages (10 office pages in the format /office/location-1; /office/location-2 etc) but the content is different. How should we handle the canonical tag? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | AztekMedia0 -
Should I use 'Click here' as an inbound link for my cornerstone content?
Hello Should I use 'Click here' as an inbound link for my cornerstone content? Example: For a full selection of our Facebook Event Attendee packages, please click here. OR Example: Please click the following link for a selection of our Facebook Event Attendee packages. This is my product page to help you better understand the context: LikeChimp
On-Page Optimization | | xdunningx0 -
Noindex child pages (whose content is included on parent pages)?
I'm sorry if there have been questions close to this before... I've using WordPress less like a blogging platform and more like a CMS for years now... For content management purposes we organize a lot of content around Parent/Child page (and custom-post-type) relationships; the Child pages are included as tabbed content on the Parent page. Should I be noindexing these child pages, since their content is already on the site, in full, on their Parent pages (ie. duplicate content)? Or does it not matter, since the crawlers may not go to all of the tabbed content? None of the pages have shown up in Moz's "High Priority Issues" as duplicate content but it still seems like I'm making the Parent pages suffer needlessly... Anything obvious I'm not taking into consideration? By the by, this is my first post here @ Moz, which I'm loving; this site and the forums are such a great resource! Anyways, thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | rsigg0 -
The company brand name does not show in SERP
Our company is ranking no.1 for brand keyword, however, when you try to find it by two words(with space between) then all those shows up and the website is nowhere to find. Any suggestions on how to solve this without the need to be ranked for something related
On-Page Optimization | | GardenPet0 -
Why Moz is showing Duplicate Page Content Issues?
We have a Career Section on our website. For each job post, there is a separate link of "Apply Job". Now Moz's Crawl Diagnostic is showing Duplicate page content for such URLs. Here are two such URLs: http://tiny.cc/em9nyw http://tiny.cc/bq9nyw Can any one please suggest on this? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | chandman0 -
Conflicting Canonical Tag in On-Page Report
I'm going through my site with the "One-Page report card for some PPC landing pages. If I have this canonical tag on my page : I get a Fail in the "Critical Factors Section here: Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical but a Pass in the Optional Factors here: Canonical URL Tag Usage If I take the canonical link out, the opposite happens, what am I missing? Is the format wrong? Thanks Michael
On-Page Optimization | | mjrinvent0 -
Home page ranking dropped below internal pages
The index page for a site I manage has dropped significantly - internal pages rank above it. It's a new site, 2 months old but was ranking at 1st. Any suggestions as to how I can debug this?
On-Page Optimization | | OptioPublishing0