Robots.txt file question? NEver seen this command before
-
Hey Everyone!
Perhaps someone can help me. I came across this command in the robots.txt file of our Canadian corporate domain. I looked around online but can't seem to find a definitive answer (slightly relevant).
the command line is as follows:
Disallow: /*?*
I'm guessing this might have something to do with blocking php string searches on the site?. It might also have something to do with blocking sub-domains, but the "?" mark puzzles me
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks, Rob
-
I don't think this is correct.
? is an attempt at using a RegEx in Robots file which I don't think works.
Further, if it was a properly formed regex, it would be ?
- is a special character for the user agent to mean all. For the disallow line, I believe you have to use a specific directory or page.
http://www.robotstxt.org/robotstxt.html
I could be wrong, but the info on this site has been my understanding from the past too.
-
It depends on how your site is structured.
For example if you have a page at
http://www.yourdomain.com/products.php
and this shows different things based on the parameter, like:
http://www.yourdomain.com/products.php?type=widgets
You will want to get rid of this line in your robots.txt
However if the parameter(s) doesn't change the content on the page, you can leave it in.
-
Thanks Ryan and Ryan! I'm just unfamiliar with this command set in the robots file, and getting settled into the company (5 weeks).. so I am still learning the site's structure and arch. With it all being new to me with limitations I am seeing from the CMS side, I was wondering if this might have been causing crawl issues for Bing and or Yahoo... I'm trying to gauge where we might be experiencing problems with the sites crawl functions.
-
Its not a bad idea in the robots.txt, but unless you are 100% confidant that you wont block something that you really want, i would consider just handling unwanted parameters and pages through the new Google Webmaster url handling toolset. that way you have more control over which ones do and dont get blocked.
-
So, for this parameter, should I keep it in the robots file?
-
Its preventing spiders from crawling pages with parameters in the URL. For example when you search on google you'll see a URL like so:
http://www.google.com/search?q=seo
This passes the parameter of q with a value of 'seo' to the page at google.com for it to work its magic with. This is almost definitely a good thing, unless the only way to access some content on your site is via URL parameters.
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
-
URL structuring / redirect question
Hi there, I have a URL structuring / redirect question. I have many pages on my site but I set each page up to fall under one of two folders as I serve two unique markets and want each side to be indexed properly. I have SIDE A: www.domain/FOLDER-A.com and SIDE B: www.domain/FOLDER-B. The problem is that I have a page for www.domain.com and www.domain/FOLDER-A/page1.com but I do NOT have a page for www.domain/FOLDER-A. The reason for this is that I've opted to make what would be www.domain/FOLDER-A be www.domain.com and act the primary landing page the site. As a result, there is no page located at www.domain/FOLDER-A. My WordPress template (Divi by Elegant Themes) forced me to create a blank page to be able to build off the FOLDER-A framework. My question is that given I am forced to have this blank page, do I leave it be or create a 302 or 307 redirect to www.domain.com? I fear using a 301 redirect given I may want to utilize this page for content at some point in the future. This isn't the easiest post to follow so please let me know if I need to restate the question. Many thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | KurtWSEO0 -
Will a Robots.txt 'disallow' of a directory, keep Google from seeing 301 redirects for pages/files within the directory?
Hi- I have a client that had thousands of dynamic php pages indexed by Google that shouldn't have been. He has since blocked these php pages via robots.txt disallow. Unfortunately, many of those php pages were linked to by high quality sites mulitiple times (instead of the static urls) before he put up the php 'disallow'. If we create 301 redirects for some of these php URLs that area still showing high value backlinks and send them to the correct static URLs, will Google even see these 301 redirects and pass link value to the proper static URLs? Or will the robots.txt keep Google away and we lose all these high quality backlinks? I guess the same question applies if we use the canonical tag instead of the 301. Will the robots.txt keep Google from seeing the canonical tags on the php pages? Thanks very much, V
Technical SEO | | Voodak0 -
Google indexing despite robots.txt block
Hi This subdomain has about 4'000 URLs indexed in Google, although it's blocked via robots.txt: https://www.google.com/search?safe=off&q=site%3Awww1.swisscom.ch&oq=site%3Awww1.swisscom.ch This has been the case for almost a year now, and it does not look like Google tends to respect the blocking in http://www1.swisscom.ch/robots.txt Any clues why this is or what I could do to resolve it? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | zeepartner0 -
Robots.txt and Magento
HI, I am working on getting my robots.txt up and running and I'm having lots of problems with the robots.txt my developers generated. www.plasticplace.com/robots.txt I ran the robots.txt through a syntax checking tool (http://www.sxw.org.uk/computing/robots/check.html) This is what the tool came back with: http://www.dcs.ed.ac.uk/cgi/sxw/parserobots.pl?site=plasticplace.com There seems to be many errors on the file. Additionally, I looked at our robots.txt in the WMT and they said the crawl was postponed because the robots.txt is inaccessible. What does that mean? A few questions: 1. Is there a need for all the lines of code that have the “#” before it? I don’t think it’s necessary but correct me if I'm wrong. 2. Furthermore, why are we blocking so many things on our website? The robots can’t get past anything that requires a password to access anyhow but again correct me if I'm wrong. 3. Is there a reason Why can't it just look like this: User-agent: * Disallow: /onepagecheckout/ Disallow: /checkout/cart/ I do understand that Magento has certain folders that you don't want crawled, but is this necessary and why are there so many errors?
Technical SEO | | EcomLkwd0 -
Duplicate video content question
This is really two questions in one. 1. If we put a video on YouTube and on our site via Wistia, how would that affect our rankings/authority/credibility? Would we get punished for duplicate video content? 2. If we put a Wistia hosted video on our website twice, on two different pages, we would get hit for having duplicate content? Any other suggestions regarding hosting on Wistia and YouTube versus just Wistia for product videos would be much appreciated. Thank you!
Technical SEO | | ShawnHerrick1 -
Guest Blog Posts (Originally Seen on . .)
We are making a push to get our blog posts featured on other blogs, and bring in guest bloggers. We figured we could just repost a blog post on our blog, and link back to the original post. Obviously this provides some link juice, but do you think it's a bad idea because of duplicate content? Specifically, I'm also a Huffington Post blogger, so I have the option of writing an article, posting it on our site and HuffPo, and linking back to the original to give us links. Any advice?
Technical SEO | | moziodavid0 -
Another http vs https Question?
Is it better to keep the Transaction/ Payment pages on a commercial website as the only secure ones (https) and remainder of website as http? Or is it better to have all the commercial website as secure (https)?
Technical SEO | | sherohass0 -
Site Hosting Question
We are UK based web designers who have recently been asked to build a website for an Australian Charity. Normally we would host the website in the UK with our current hosting company, but as this is an Australian website with an .au domain I was wondering if it would be better to host it in Australia. If it is better to host it in Australia, I would appreciate if someone could give me the name of a reasonably priced hosting company. Thanks Fraser
Technical SEO | | fraserhannah0