Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
      Moz API

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Technical SEO
    4. Multiple robots.txt files on server

    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.

    Multiple robots.txt files on server

    Technical SEO
    5
    7
    3819
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • mjukhud
      mjukhud last edited by

      Hi!

      I have previously hired a developer to put up my site and noticed afterwards that he did not know much about SEO. This lead me to starting to learn myself and applying some changes step by step.

      One of the things I am currently doing is inserting sitemap reference in robots.txt file (which was not there before). But just now when I wanted to upload the file via FTP to my server I found multiple ones - in different sizes - and I dont know what to do with them? Can I remove them? I have downloaded and opened them and they seem to be 2 textfiles and 2 dupplicates. Names:

      robots.txt (original dupplicate)
      robots.txt-Original (original)
      robots.txt-NEW (other content)
      robots.txt-Working (other content dupplicate)

      Would really appreciate help and expertise suggestions. Thanks!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • peakdistrictseo
        peakdistrictseo last edited by

        So what's the best policy if a site uses an e-commerce platform like Magento, which has a robots file, but also has a Wordpress blog installed to another folder. eg: /blog and uses a plugin like YOAST which generated a robots file of the Wordpress installation.

        Then you have 2 robots files, is this detrimental or no big deal?

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • mjukhud
          mjukhud @seoman10 last edited by

          Thanks very much for the help!

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • mjukhud
            mjukhud last edited by

            Thanks very much for the help!

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • seoman10
              seoman10 last edited by

              Keep a backup and remove them.

              Search engines are only going to look at the file which is exactly called robots.txt variations of file name will be ignored.

              Do make sure the entries are correct in the main one though, you don't want Google crawling admin pages or other confidential areas of the site.

              mjukhud 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • mjukhud
                mjukhud @Mustansar last edited by

                Hi, thanks for the answer and help!

                Well, I only have one domain that has a webpage and no subdomains active (no blog-subdomain or similar) - so how can I configure that to the situation? Can I just remove all and upload the one I want, maybe?

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • Mustansar
                  Mustansar last edited by

                  That's a good question, EMS.  The robots.txt protocol can get kind of 
                  confusing when you think about it too long, and it sounds like you've 
                  thought about this a bit.  However, in this case, it might help to 
                  look at robots.txt from the perspective of the spider.

                  When a spider finds a URL, it takes the whole domain name (everything 
                  between 'http://' and the next '/'), then sticks a '/robots.txt' on 
                  the end of it and looks for that file.  If that file exists, then the 
                  spider should read it to see where it is allowed to crawl.

                  In your case, Googlebot, or any other spider, should try to access 
                  three URLs: domainA.com/robots.txt, domainB.domainA.com/robots.txt, 
                  and domainB.com/robots.txt.  The rules in each are treated as 
                  separate, so disallowing robots from domainA.com/ should result in 
                  domainA.com/ being removed from search results while 
                  domainB.domainA.com/ remains unaffected, which does not sound like not 
                  something you want.

                  The problem you might have with the setup you have described is this-- 
                  in order to keep domainB.domainA.com out of the results, you would 
                  need to have domainB.domainA.com/robots.txt exclude robots, while 
                  domainB.com/robots.txt welcomes them.  This means that you would need 
                  to have a way to make domainB.domainA.com/ and domainB.com/ serve 
                  different information, and judging from what you've described, you 
                  have not set up your server to do so yet.

                  Of course, it is always possible that I have assumed to much about 
                  your situation, so it is a good idea to use Google's robots.txt 
                  analysis tool (see http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/topic.py?topic=8475
                  ) to see if your robots.txt files already produce the results you 
                  want.

                  If using robots.txt files doesn't solve the problem, and assuming that 
                  you want to continue hosting all of your content on domainA.com, one 
                  strategy you really should look into would be setting up a 301 
                  redirect from the pages on domainB.domainA.com/ to domainB.com/ .  If 
                  you need more advice on how to do this with your server software, your 
                  hosting company's tech support would definitely be the best place to 
                  start, but this group is here to help if more isues arise. 🙂

                  Hope that helps!

                  mjukhud 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • 1 / 1
                  • First post
                    Last post

                  Got a burning SEO question?

                  Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                  Start my free trial


                  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.

                  • See all categories

                  Related Questions

                  • JamesHancocks1

                    Robots.txt Tester - syntax not understood

                    I've looked in the robots.txt Tester and I can see 3 warnings: There is a 'syntax not understood' warning for each of these. XML Sitemaps:
                    https://www.pkeducation.co.uk/post-sitemap.xml
                    https://www.pkeducation.co.uk/sitemap_index.xml How do I fix or reformat these to remove the warnings? Many thanks in advance.
                    Jim

                    Technical SEO | | JamesHancocks1
                    0
                  • zeepartner

                    Robots.txt on http vs. https

                    We recently changed our domain from http to https. When a user enters any URL on http, there is an global 301 redirect to the same page on https. I cannot find instructions about what to do with robots.txt. Now that https is the canonical version, should I block the http-Version with robots.txt? Strangely, I cannot find a single ressource about this...

                    Technical SEO | | zeepartner
                    0
                  • MickEdwards

                    Adding multi-language sitemaps to robots.txt

                    I am working on a revamped multi-language site that has moved to Magento.  Each language runs off the core coding so there are no sub-directories per language. The developer has created sitemaps which have been uploaded to their respective GWT accounts.  They have placed the sitemaps in new directories such as: /sitemap/uk/sitemap.xml /sitemap/de/sitemap.xml I want to add the sitemaps to the robots.txt but can't figure out how to do it.  Also should they have placed the sitemaps in a single location with the file identifying each language: /sitemap/uk-sitemap.xml /sitemap/de-sitemap.xml What is the cleanest way of handling these sitemaps and can/should I get them on robots.txt?

                    Technical SEO | | MickEdwards
                    0
                  • NicDale

                    Is there any value in having a blank robots.txt file?

                    I've read an audit where the writer recommended creating and uploading a blank robots.txt file, there was no current file in place.  Is there any merit in having a blank robots.txt file? What is the minimum you would include in a basic robots.txt file?

                    Technical SEO | | NicDale
                    0
                  • KCBackofen

                    Will an XML sitemap override a robots.txt

                    I have a client that has a robots.txt file that is blocking an entire subdomain, entirely by accident. Their original solution, not realizing the robots.txt error, was to submit an xml sitemap to get their pages indexed. I did not think this tactic would work, as the robots.txt would take precedent over the xmls sitemap. But it worked... I have no explanation as to how or why. Does anyone have an answer to this? or any experience with a website that has had a clear Disallow: / for months , that somehow has pages in the index?

                    Technical SEO | | KCBackofen
                    0
                  • ulefos

                    Remove html file extension and 301 redirects

                    Hi Recently I ask for some work done on my website from a company,  but I am not sure what they've done is right.
                    What I wanted was html file extensions to be removed like
                    /ash-logs.html to /ash-logs
                    also the index.html to www.timports.co.uk
                    I have done a crawl diagnostics and have duplicate page content and 32 page title duplicates. This is so doing my head in please help This is what is in the .htaccess file <ifmodule pagespeed_module="">ModPagespeed on
                    ModPagespeedEnableFilters extend_cache,combine_css, collapse_whitespace,move_css_to_head, remove_comments</ifmodule> <ifmodule mod_headers.c="">Header set Connection keep-alive</ifmodule> <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews</ifmodule> DirectoryIndex index.html RewriteEngine On 
                     # Rewrite valid requests on .html files  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.html -f RewriteRule ^ %{REQUEST_URI}.html?rw=1 [L,QSA] 
                     # Return 404 on direct requests against .html files RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} .html$  
                    RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !rw=1 [NC]
                     RewriteRule ^ - [R=404] AddCharset UTF-8 .html # <filesmatch “.(js|css|html|htm|php|xml|swf|flv|ashx)$”="">#SetOutputFilter DEFLATE #</filesmatch> <ifmodule mod_expires.c="">ExpiresActive On
                    ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 1 years"
                    ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 1 years"
                    ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 1 years"
                    ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access plus 1 years"
                    ExpiresByType image/jpg "access plus 1 years"
                    ExpiresByType text/css "access 1 years"
                    ExpiresByType text/x-javascript "access 1 years"
                    ExpiresByType application/javascript "access 1 years"
                    ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access 1 years"</ifmodule> <files 403.shtml="">order allow,deny allow from all</files> redirect 301 /PRODUCTS http://www.timports.co.uk/kiln-dried-logs
                    redirect 301 /kindling_firewood.html http://www.timports.co.uk/kindling-firewood.html
                    redirect 301 /about_us.html http://www.timports.co.uk/about-us.html
                    redirect 301 /log_delivery.html http://www.timports.co.uk/log-delivery.html redirect 301 /oak_boards_delivery.html http://www.timports.co.uk/oak-boards-delivery.html
                    redirect 301 /un_edged_oak_boards.html http://www.timports.co.uk/un-edged-oak-boards.html
                    redirect 301 /wholesale_logs.html http://www.timports.co.uk/wholesale-logs.html redirect 301 /privacy_policy.html http://www.timports.co.uk/privacy-policy.html redirect 301 /payment_failed.html http://www.timports.co.uk/payment-failed.html redirect 301 /payment_info.html http://www.timports.co.uk/payment-info.html

                    Technical SEO | | ulefos
                    1
                  • Webmaster123

                    I accidentally blocked Google with Robots.txt. What next?

                    Last week I uploaded my site and forgot to remove the robots.txt file with this text: User-agent: * Disallow: / I dropped from page 11 on my main keywords to past page 50. I caught it 2-3 days later and have now fixed it. I re-imported my site map with Webmaster Tools and I also did a Fetch as Google through Webmaster Tools. I tweeted out my URL to hopefully get Google to crawl it faster too. Webmaster Tools no longer says that the site is experiencing outages, but when I look at my blocked URLs it still says 249 are blocked. That's actually gone up since I made the fix. In the Google search results, it still no longer has my page title and the description still says "A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt – learn more." How will this affect me long-term? When will I recover my rankings? Is there anything else I can do? Thanks for your input! www.decalsforthewall.com

                    Technical SEO | | Webmaster123
                    0
                  • ProjectLabs

                    Determining When to Break a Page Into Multiple Pages?

                    Suppose you have a page on your site that is a couple thousand words long. How would you determine when to split the page into two and are there any SEO advantages to doing this like being more focused on a specific topic. I noticed the Beginner's Guide to SEO is split into several pages, although it would concentrate the link juice if it was all on one page. Suppose you have a lot of comments. Is it better to move comments to a second page at a certain point? Sometimes the comments are not super focused on the topic of the page compared to the main text.

                    Technical SEO | | ProjectLabs
                    1

                  Get started with Moz Pro!

                  Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                  Start my free trial
                  Products
                  • Moz Pro
                  • Moz Local
                  • Moz API
                  • Moz Data
                  • STAT
                  • Product Updates
                  Moz Solutions
                  • SMB Solutions
                  • Agency Solutions
                  • Enterprise Solutions
                  • Digital Marketers
                  Free SEO Tools
                  • Domain Authority Checker
                  • Link Explorer
                  • Keyword Explorer
                  • Competitive Research
                  • Brand Authority Checker
                  • Local Citation Checker
                  • MozBar Extension
                  • MozCast
                  Resources
                  • Blog
                  • SEO Learning Center
                  • Help Hub
                  • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                  • How-to Guides
                  • Moz Academy
                  • API Docs
                  About Moz
                  • About
                  • Team
                  • Careers
                  • Contact
                  Why Moz
                  • Case Studies
                  • Testimonials
                  Get Involved
                  • Become an Affiliate
                  • MozCon
                  • Webinars
                  • Practical Marketer Series
                  • MozPod
                  Connect with us

                  Contact the Help team

                  Join our newsletter
                  Moz logo
                  © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                  • Accessibility
                  • Terms of Use
                  • Privacy

                  Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.