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.
Large robots.txt file
-
We're looking at potentially creating a robots.txt with 1450 lines in it. This will remove 100k+ pages from the crawl that are all old pages (I know, the ideal would be to delete/noindex but not viable unfortunately)
Now the issue i'm thinking is that a large robots.txt will either stop the robots.txt from being followed or will slow our crawl rate down.
Does anybody have any experience with a robots.txt of that size?
-
Answered my own questions:
https://developers.google.com/webmasters/control-crawl-index/docs/robots_txt?csw=1#file-format
"A maximum file size may be enforced per crawler. Content which is after the maximum file size may be ignored. Google currently enforces a size limit of 500kb."
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
-
What happens to crawled URLs subsequently blocked by robots.txt?
We have a very large store with 278,146 individual product pages. Since these are all various sizes and packaging quantities of less than 200 product categories my feeling is that Google would be better off making sure our category pages are indexed. I would like to block all product pages via robots.txt until we are sure all category pages are indexed, then unblock them. Our product pages rarely change, no ratings or product reviews so there is little reason for a search engine to revisit a product page. The sales team is afraid blocking a previously indexed product page will result in in it being removed from the Google index and would prefer to submit the categories by hand, 10 per day via requested crawling. Which is the better practice?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AspenFasteners1 -
Default Wordpress 301 Redirects of JS and CSS files. Bad for SEO & How to Fix?
Hi there: We are developers with some digital marketing expertise, but a current issue has us perplexed. An outside SEO firm has asked us to clean up a large number of 301 redirects. Most of these are 'default' Wordpress behavior that relate to calling the latest version of a JS or CSS file. For instance, a JS file is called with this: https://websitexyz.com/wp-includes/js/wp-embed.min.js?ver=4.9.1 but ultimately redirects to this: https://websitexyz.com/wp-includes/js/wp-embed.min.js. We are being asked to prevent the redirect from happening by, presumably, calling the ultimate file to begin with. The issue is that, as far as we know, there's no easy way to alter WP behavior to call the ultimate file to begin with. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Daaveey0 -
Should I disallow all URL query strings/parameters in Robots.txt?
Webmaster Tools correctly identifies the query strings/parameters used in my URLs, but still reports duplicate title tags and meta descriptions for the original URL and the versions with parameters. For example, Webmaster Tools would report duplicates for the following URLs, despite it correctly identifying the "cat_id" and "kw" parameters: /Mulligan-Practitioner-CD-ROM
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jmorehouse
/Mulligan-Practitioner-CD-ROM?cat_id=87
/Mulligan-Practitioner-CD-ROM?kw=CROM Additionally, theses pages have self-referential canonical tags, so I would think I'd be covered, but I recently read that another Mozzer saw a great improvement after disallowing all query/parameter URLs, despite Webmaster Tools not reporting any errors. As I see it, I have two options: Manually tell Google that these parameters have no effect on page content via the URL Parameters section in Webmaster Tools (in case Google is unable to automatically detect this, and I am being penalized as a result). Add "Disallow: *?" to hide all query/parameter URLs from Google. My concern here is that most backlinks include the parameters, and in some cases these parameter URLs outrank the original. Any thoughts?0 -
Should comments and feeds be disallowed in robots.txt?
Hi My robots file is currently set up as listed below. From an SEO point of view is it good to disallow feeds, rss and comments? I feel allowing comments would be a good thing because it's new content that may rank in the search engines as the comments left on my blog often refer to questions or companies folks are searching for more information on. And the comments are added regularly. What's your take? I'm also concerned about the /page being blocked. Not sure how that benefits my blog from an SEO point of view as well. Look forward to your feedback. Thanks. Eddy User-agent: Googlebot Crawl-delay: 10 Allow: /* User-agent: * Crawl-delay: 10 Disallow: /wp- Disallow: /feed/ Disallow: /trackback/ Disallow: /rss/ Disallow: /comments/feed/ Disallow: /page/ Disallow: /date/ Disallow: /comments/ # Allow Everything Allow: /*
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | workathomecareers0 -
Is Google indexing Mp3 audio and MIDI music files? Can that cause any duplicate problems?
Hello, I own virtualsheetmusic.com website and we have several thousands of media files (Mp3 and MIDI files) that potentially Google can index. If that's the case, I am wondering if that could cause any "duplicate" issues of some sort since many of such media files have exact file names or same meta information inside. Any thoughts about this issue are very welcome! Thank you in advance to anyone.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
Robots Disallow Backslash - Is it right command
Bit skeptical, as due to dynamic url and some other linkage issue, google has crawled url with backslash and asterisk character ex - www.xyz.com/\/index.php?option=com_product www.xyz.com/\"/index.php?option=com_product Now %5c is the encoded version of \ - backslash & %22 is encoded version of asterisk Need to know for command :- User-agent: * Disallow: \As am disallowing all backslash url through this - will it only remove the backslash url which are duplicates or the entire site,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Modi0 -
Using WP All Import csv import plugin for wordpress to daily update products on large ecommerce site. Category naming and other issues.
We have just got an automated solution working to upload about 4000 products daily to our site. We get a CSV file from the wholesalers server each day and the way they have named products and categories is not ideal. Although most of the products remain the same (don't need to be over written) Some will go out of stock or prices may change etc. Problem is we have no control over the csv file so we need to keep the catagories they have given us. Might be able to create new catgories and have products listed under multiple categories? If anyone has used wp all import or has knoledge in this area please let me know. I have plenty more questions but this should start the ball rolling! Thanks in advance mozzers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | weebro0 -
Using 2 wildcards in the robots.txt file
I have a URL string which I don't want to be indexed. it includes the characters _Q1 ni the middle of the string. So in the robots.txt can I use 2 wildcards in the string to take out all of the URLs with that in it? So something like /_Q1. Will that pickup and block every URL with those characters in the string? Also, this is not directly of the root, but in a secondary directory, so .com/.../_Q1. So do I have to format the robots.txt as //_Q1* as it will be in the second folder or just using /_Q1 will pickup everything no matter what folder it is on? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seo1234560
