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.
Google Search console says 'sitemap is blocked by robots?
-
Google Search console is telling me "Sitemap contains URLs which are blocked by robots.txt."
I don't understand why my sitemap is being blocked? My robots.txt look like this:
User-Agent: *
Disallow:It's a WordPress site, with Yoast SEO installed. Is anyone else having this issue with Google Search console? Does anyone know how I can fix this issue?
-
Nice happy to hear that do you work with Greg Reindel? He is a good friend I looked at your IP that is why I ask?
Tom
-
I agree with David
Hey is your dev Greg Reindel? If so you can call me for help PM me here for my info.
Thomas Zickell
-
Hey guys, I ended up disabling the sitemap option from YoastSEO, then installed the 'Google (XML) sitemap' plug-in. I re-submitted the sitemap to Google last night, and it came back with no issues. I'm glad to finally have this sorted out.
Thanks for all the help!
-
Hi Christian,
The current robots.txt shouldn't be blocking those URLs.
Did you or someone else recently change the robots.txt file? If so, give Google a few days to re-crawl your site.
Also, can you check what happens when you do a fetch and render on one of the blocked posts in Search Console? Do you have issues there?
Cheers,
David
-
I think you need to make an https robots.txt file if you are running https if running https
https://moz.com/blog/xml-sitemaps
`User-agent: * Disallow: /wp-admin/ Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php` Sitemap: https://domain.com/index-sitemap.xml
(that is a https site map)
can you send the sitemap URL or run it though deepcrawl
Hope this helps?
Did you make a new robots.txt file?
-
Thanks for the response. Do you think this is a robots.txt issue? Or could this be caused by the YoastSEO plugin?
Do you know if this plug-in works with YoastSEO together? Or will it cause issues?
-
Thank you for the response.
I just scanned the site using 'Screaming frog'. Under Internal>Directives there were zero 'no index' links. I also check for '404 errors', server 505 errors, or anything 'blocked by robots.txt'.
Google search console is still showing me that there are URL's being blocked by my sitemap. (I added a screenshot of this). When I click through, it tells me that the 'post sitemap' has over +300 warnings.
I have just deleted the YoastSEO plugin, and I am now re-installing it. hopefully, this fixes the issue.
-
No, you do not need to change or plug-in what is happening is Webmaster tools is telling you that you have no index or no follow were robots xTag somewhere on your URLs inside your sitemap.
Run your site through Moz, screaming frog Seo spider or deepcrawl and look for no indexed URLs.
webmaster tools/search console is telling you that you have no index URLs inside of your XML sitemap not that you robots.txt is blocking it. This would be set in the Yoast plugin. one way to correct it is to look for noindex URLs & filter them inside Yoast so they are not being presented to the crawlers.
If you would like you can turn off the sitemap on Yoast and turn it back on if that does not work I recommend completely removing the plug-in and reinstalling it
- https://kb.yoast.com/kb/how-can-i-uninstall-my-plugin/
- https://kinsta.com/blog/uninstall-wordpress-plugin/
Can you send a screenshot of what you're seeing?
When you see it in Google Webmaster tools are you talking about the XML sitemap itself mean no indexed because all XML sitemaps are no indexed.
Please add this to your robots.txt
`User-agent:* Disallow:/wp-admin/ Allow:/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php` Sitemap: http://www.website.com/sitemap_index.xml
I hope this is of help,
Tom
-
Hi,
Use this plugin
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-robots-txt/
it will remove previous robots.txt and set simple wordpress robots.txt and wait for a day
problem can be solved.
Also watch this video on the same @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZiyN07bbBM
Thanks
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
-
Google image search filter tabs and how to rank on them
I have noticed Google image search has included suggestion tabs (e.g,. design, nature... when searching background) on the top of the image search.
Technical SEO | | Mike555
Are there specific meta tags I can add into my images so that my images will show up on each tab?
Do those filters just show content based on image keywords or something else? IRme7gQ0 -
Why can't google mobile friendly test access my website?
getting the following error when trying to use google mobile friendly tool: "page cannot be reached. This could be because the page is unavailable or blocked by robots.txt" I don't have anything blocked by robots.txt or robots tag. i also manage to render my pages on google search console's fetch and render....so what can be the reason that the tool can't access my website? Also...the mobile usability report on the search console works but reports very little, and the google speed test also doesnt work... Any ideas to what is the reason and how to fix this? LEARN MOREDetailsUser agentGooglebot smartphone
Technical SEO | | Nadav_W0 -
If I'm using a compressed sitemap (sitemap.xml.gz) that's the URL that gets submitted to webmaster tools, correct?
I just want to verify that if a compressed sitemap file is being used, then the URL that gets submitted to Google, Bing, etc and the URL that's used in the robots.txt indicates that it's a compressed file. For example, "sitemap.xml.gz" -- thanks!
Technical SEO | | jgresalfi0 -
Robot.txt : How to block a specific file type in several subdirectories ?
Hello everyone ! I need help setting up a robot.txt. I'm trying to block all pdf files in particular directories so I'm using this command. In the example below the line is blocking all .gif in the entire site. Block files of a specific file type (for example, .gif) | Disallow: /*.gif$ 2 questions : Can I use this command to specify one particular directory in which I want to block pdf files ? Will this line be recognized by googlebots ? Disallow: /fileadmin/xxxxxxx/xxx/xxxxxxx/*.pdf$ Then I realized that I would have to write as many lines as many directories there are in which I want to block pdf files. Let's say I want to block pdf files in all these 3 directories /fileadmin/directory1 /fileadmin/directory1/sub1 /fileadmin/directory1/sub1/pdf Is there a pattern-matching rule I could use to blocks access to pdf files in all subdirectories instead of writing 3x the above line for each subdirectory ? For exemple : Disallow: /fileadmin/directory1*/ Many thanks in advance for any insight you may have.
Technical SEO | | LabeliumUSA0 -
Blocking Affiliate Links via robots.txt
Hi, I work with a client who has a large affiliate network pointing to their domain which is a large part of their inbound marketing strategy. All of these links point to a subdomain of affiliates.example.com, which then redirects the links through a 301 redirect to the relevant target page for the link. These links have been showing up in Webmaster Tools as top linking domains and also in the latest downloaded links reports. To follow guidelines and ensure that these links aren't counted by Google for either positive or negative impact on the site, we have added a block on the robots.txt of the affiliates.example.com subdomain, blocking search engines from crawling the full subddomain. The robots.txt file is the following code: User-agent: * Disallow: / We have authenticated the subdomain with Google Webmaster Tools and made certain that Google can reach and read the robots.txt file. We know they are being blocked from reading the affiliates subdomain. However, we added this affiliates subdomain block a few weeks ago to the robots.txt, but links are still showing up in the latest downloads report as first being discovered after we added the block. It's been a few weeks already, and we want to make sure that the block was implemented properly and that these links aren't being used to negatively impact the site. Any suggestions or clarification would be helpful - if the subdomain is being blocked for the search engines, why are the search engines following the links and reporting them in the www.example.com subdomain GWMT account as latest links. And if the block is implemented properly, will the total number of links pointing to our site as reported in the links to your site section be reduced, or does this not have an impact on that figure?From a development standpoint, it's a much easier fix for us to adjust the robots.txt file than to change the affiliate linking connection from a 301 to a 302, which is why we decided to go with this option.Any help you can offer will be greatly appreciated.Thanks,Mark
Technical SEO | | Mark_Ginsberg0 -
Google insists robots.txt is blocking... but it isn't.
I recently launched a new website. During development, I'd enabled the option in WordPress to prevent search engines from indexing the site. When the site went public (over 24 hours ago), I cleared that option. At that point, I added a specific robots.txt file that only disallowed a couple directories of files. You can view the robots.txt at http://photogeardeals.com/robots.txt Google (via Webmaster tools) is insisting that my robots.txt file contains a "Disallow: /" on line 2 and that it's preventing Google from indexing the site and preventing me from submitting a sitemap. These errors are showing both in the sitemap section of Webmaster tools as well as the Blocked URLs section. Bing's webmaster tools are able to read the site and sitemap just fine. Any idea why Google insists I'm disallowing everything even after telling it to re-fetch?
Technical SEO | | ahockley0 -
Javascript to manipulate Google's bounce rate and time on site?
I was referred to this "awesome" solution to high bounce rates. It is suppose to "fix" bounce rates and lower them through this simple script. When the bounce rate goes way down then rankings dramatically increase (interesting study but not my question). I don't know javascript but simply adding a script to the footer and watch everything fall into place seems a bit iffy to me. Can someone with experience in JS help me by explaining what this script does? I think it manipulates the reporting it does to GA but I'm not sure. It was supposed to be placed in the footer of the page and then sit back and watch the dollars fly in. 🙂
Technical SEO | | BenRWoodard1