Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Block Moz (or any other robot) from crawling pages with specific URLs
-
Hello!
Moz reports that my site has around 380 duplicate page content. Most of them come from dynamic generated URLs that have some specific parameters. I have sorted this out for Google in webmaster tools (the new Google Search Console) by blocking the pages with these parameters. However, Moz is still reporting the same amount of duplicate content pages and, to stop it, I know I must use robots.txt. The trick is that, I don't want to block every page, but just the pages with specific parameters. I want to do this because among these 380 pages there are some other pages with no parameters (or different parameters) that I need to take care of. Basically, I need to clean this list to be able to use the feature properly in the future.
I have read through Moz forums and found a few topics related to this, but there is no clear answer on how to block only pages with specific URLs. Therefore, I have done my research and come up with these lines for robots.txt:
User-agent: dotbot
Disallow: /*numberOfStars=0User-agent: rogerbot
Disallow: /*numberOfStars=0My questions:
1. Are the above lines correct and would block Moz (dotbot and rogerbot) from crawling only pages that have numberOfStars=0 parameter in their URLs, leaving other pages intact?
2. Do I need to have an empty line between the two groups? (I mean between "Disallow: /*numberOfStars=0" and "User-agent: rogerbot")? (or does it even matter?)
I think this would help many people as there is no clear answer on how to block crawling only pages with specific URLs. Moreover, this should be valid for any robot out there.
Thank you for your help!
-
Hello!
Thanks a lot for your feedback and clearing this out! It worked well.
The robots.txt tester is a good tip!
Thanks!
-
Hi,
What you have there will work absolutely fine with a little tweak. And no need to leave spaces between lines.
Disallow: /numberOfStars=0
However, no need to add the wildcard at the end if there is nothing more after that.
The best way to test what works, is before you go and add it to live, use the Robots.txt test tool in Search Console (Webmaster Tools), add in the lines above and then check to make sure none of your other pages are blocked. They won't be, but it's a great way to test before going live.
I hope this helps
-Andy
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
-
Unsolved Is Moz Able to Track Internal Links Per Page?
I am trying to track internal links and identify orphan pages. What is the best way to do this?
Moz Pro | | WebMarkets0 -
Ahrefs vs Moz
Hi! I noticed the Moz DA en the Ahrefs DA are very different. Where https://www.123opzeggen.nl/ has a DA of 10 at MOZ, the DA at Ahrefs is 26. Where does this big difference come from? Do you measure in different ways? I hope you can answer this question for me. Thank you in advance!
Moz Pro | | NaomiAdivare2 -
Difference between urls and referring urls?
Sorry, nit new to this side of SEO We recently discovered we have over 200 critical crawler issues on our site (mainly 4xx) We exported the CSV and it shows both a URL link and a referring URL. Both lead to a 'page not found' so I have two questions? What is the difference between a URL and a referring URL? What is the best practice/how do we fix this issue? Is it one for our web developer? Appreciate the help.
Moz Pro | | ayrutd1 -
URL Length Issue
MOZ is telling me the URLs are too long. I did a little research and I found out that the length of the URLs is not really a serious problem. In fact, others recommend ignoring the situation. Even on their blog I found this explanation: "Shorter URLs are generally preferable. You do not need to take this to the extreme, and if your URL is already less than 50-60 characters, do not worry about it at all. But if you have URLs pushing 100+ characters, there's probably an opportunity to rewrite them and gain value. This is not a direct problem with Google or Bing - the search engines can process long URLs without much trouble. The issue, instead, lies with usability and user experience. Shorter URLs are easier to parse, copy and paste, share on social media, and embed, and while these may all add up to a fractional improvement in sharing or amplification, every tweet, like, share, pin, email, and link matters (either directly or, often, indirectly)." And yet, I have these questions: In this case, why do I get this error telling me that the urls are too long, and what are the best practices to get this out? Thank You
Moz Pro | | Cart_generation1 -
MOZ Versus HUBSPOT??? If We Discontinue MOZ Subscription and Get HUBSPOT, Anything Lost?
How does Hubspot compare with MOZ? Doe it provide similar features or is the functionality very different? Is Hubspot complementary to MOZ or could it be used as a substitute? If we stopped our MOZ subscription and subscribed to Hubspot would we lose anything? Thanks, Alan
Moz Pro | | Kingalan10 -
How to remove 404 pages wordpress
I used the crawl tool and it return a 404 error for several pages that I no longer have published in Wordpress. They must still be on the server somewhere? Do you know how to remove them? I think they are not a file on the server like an html file since Wordpress uses databases? I figure that getting rid of the 404 errors will improve SEO is this correct? Thanks, David
Moz Pro | | DJDavid0 -
How long for authority to transfer form an old page to a new page via a 301 redirect? (& Moz PA score update?)
Hi How long aproximately does G take to pass authority via a 301 from an old page to its new replacement page ? Does Moz Page Authority reflect this in its score once G has passed it ? All Best
Moz Pro | | Dan-Lawrence
Dan3 -
Is there a tool to upload multiple URLs and gather statistics and page rank?
I was wondering if there is a tool out there where you can compile a list of URL resources, upload them in a CSV and run a report to gather and index each individual page. Does anyone know of a tool that can do this or do we need to create one?
Moz Pro | | Brother220