Robots.txt Syntax
-
I have been having a hard time finding any decent information regarding the robots.txt syntax that has been written in the last few years and I just want to verify some things as a review for myself. I have many occasions where I need to block particular directories in the URL, parameters and parameter values. I just wanted to make sure that I am doing this in the most efficient ways possible and thought you guys could help.
So let's say I want to block a particular directory called "this" and this would be an example URL:
www.domain.com/folder1/folder2/this/file.html
or
www.domain.com/folder1/this/folder2/file.htmlIn order for me to block any URL that contains this folder anywhere in the URL I would use:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /this/Now lets say I have a parameter "that" I want to block and sometimes it is the first parameter and sometimes it isn't when it shows up in the URL. Would it look like this?
User-agent: *
Disallow: ?that=
Disallow: &that=What about if there is only one value I want to block for "that" and the value is "NotThisGuy":
User-agent: *
Disallow: ?that=NotThisGuy
Disallow: &that=NotThisGuyMy big questions here are what are the most efficient ways to block a particular parameter and block a particular parameter value. Is there a more efficient way to deal with ? and & for when the parameter and value are either first or later? Secondly is there a list somewhere that will tell me all of the syntax and meaning that can be used for a robots.txt file?
Thanks!
-
My advice is to go easy with robots.txt--it's a bit like dynamite, powerful, but can take your leg (or entire website) off.
I like this checker:
http://tool.motoricerca.info/robots-checker.phtml
If you look ok after running that checker, then use the built-in Google one.
Note that robots.txt syntax DOES NOT have wildcards. Apparently this doesn't stop a ton of people from using wildcards in them (to no effect, and clearly they didn't bother to test!).
Another reason to avoid disallow in robots.txt is that if you disallow the engines from looking at a page's contents, then you're ALSO stopping the link juice that might have flowed to other pages it links to.
So let's say you have 100 pages on your site that you're currently blocking with disallow in robots.txt. If instead, you put a meta robots "noindex,follow" in each of those pages, then every page linked to from those 100 pages (i.e. everything in your main menu) would get an extra 100 internal links worth of link juice.
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
-
Site moved. Unable to index page : Noindex detected in robots meta tag?!
Hope someone can shed some light on this: We moved our smaller site (into the main site ( different domains) . The smaller site that was moved ( https://www.bluegreenrentals.com)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bgvsiteadmin
Directory where the site was moved (https://www.bluegreenvacations.com/rentals) Each page from the old site was 301 redirected to the appropriate page under .com/rentals. But we are seeing a significant drop in rankings and traffic., as I am unable to request a change of address in Google search console (a separate issue that I can elaborate on). Lots of (301 redirect) new destination pages are not indexed. When Inspected, I got a message : Indexing allowed? No: 'index' detected in 'robots' meta tagAll pages are set as Index/follow and there are no restrictions in robots.txtHere is an example URL :https://www.bluegreenvacations.com/rentals/resorts/colorado/innsbruck-aspen/Can someone take a look and share an opinion on this issue?Thank you!0 -
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 -
Robots.txt Help
I need help to create robots.txt file. Please let me know what to add in the file. any real example or working example.?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Michael.Leonard0 -
Robots.txt - Googlebot - Allow... what's it for?
Hello - I just came across this in robots.txt for the first time, and was wondering why it is used? Why would you have to proactively tell Googlebot to crawl JS/CSS and why would you want it to? Any help would be much appreciated - thanks, Luke User-Agent: Googlebot Allow: /.js Allow: /.css
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Search engine blocked by robots-crawl error by moz & GWT
Hello Everyone,. For My Site I am Getting Error Code 605: Page Banned by robots.txt, X-Robots-Tag HTTP Header, or Meta Robots Tag, Also google Webmaster Also not able to fetch my site, tajsigma.com is my site Any expert Can Help please, Thanx
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | falguniinnovative0 -
meta robots no follow on page for paid links
Hi I have a page containing paid links. i would like to add no follow attribute to these links
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kung_fu_Panda
but from technical reasons, i can only place meta robots no follow on page level (
is that enough for telling Google that the links in this page are paid and and to prevent Google penlizling the sites that the page link to? Thanks!0 -
Using folder blocked by robots.txt before uploaded to indexed folder - is that OK?
I have a folder "testing" within my domain which is a folder added to the robots.txt. My web developers use that folder "testing" when we are creating new content before uploading to an indexed folder. So the content is uploaded to the "testing" folder at first (which is blocked by robots.txt) and later uploaded to an indexed folder, yet permanently keeping the content in the "testing" folder. Actually, my entire website's content is located within the "testing" - so same URL structure for all pages as indexed pages, except it starts with the "testing/" folder. Question: even though the "testing" folder will not be indexed by search engines, is there a chance search engines notice that the content is at first uploaded to the "testing" folder and therefore the indexed folder is not guaranteed to get the content credit, since search engines see the content in the "testing" folder, despite the "testing" folder being blocked by robots.txt? Would it be better that I password protecting this "testing" folder? Thx
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi50 -
Robots.txt
What would be a perfect robots.txt file my site is propdental.es Can i just place: User-agent: * Or should i write something more???
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | maestrosonrisas0