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.
WEbsite cannot be crawled
-
I have received the following message from MOZ on a few of our websites now
Our crawler was not able to access the robots.txt file on your site. This often occurs because of a server error from the robots.txt. Although this may have been caused by a temporary outage, we recommend making sure your robots.txt file is accessible and that your network and server are working correctly. Typically errors like this should be investigated and fixed by the site webmaster.
I have spoken with our webmaster and they have advised the below:
The Robots.txt file is definitely there on all pages and Google is able to crawl for these files. Moz however is having some difficulty with finding the files when there is a particular redirect in place.
For example, the page currently redirects from threecounties.co.uk/ to https://www.threecounties.co.uk/ and when this happens, the Moz crawler cannot find the robots.txt on the first URL and this generates the reports you have been receiving. From what I understand, this is a flaw with the Moz software and not something that we could fix form our end.
_Going forward, something we could do is remove these rewrite rules to www., but these are useful redirects and removing them would likely have SEO implications. _
Has anyone else had this issue and is there anything we can do to rectify, or should we leave as is?
-
Ok, I made a quick test of your robot.txt file and looks fine,
https://www.threecounties.co.uk/robots.txtThen I made a test https://httpstatus.io/ to check the status code
of your robot.txt file and show me 200 status code (So it's fine)Also, you need to make sure that your robot.txt file is accessible for the Rogerbot (Moz crawler)
This day the hosting providers have become very strict with third-party crawlers
This includes Moz, Majestic SEO, Semrush and Ahrefs.Here you can find all the possible sources of the problem and recommended solutions
https://moz.com/help/guides/moz-pro-overview/site-crawl/unable-to-crawlRegards
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
-
How can i increase DA of my website?
Hi, Why my website evolvepakistan DA is not increasing it is old site even i have bought a fiverr gig of someone he was offering that he will show my site DA 70, he send me pic of 70DA, on his side 70DA of my site but when i check on it show 0 DA.
Moz Pro | | ChunkyChuck
Whats the problem?0 -
SEO impact of redirecting high ranking mirror site to the main website
During SEO audit for a client I noticed that they had over a dozen duplicate websites that are carbon copies of the main website. This was done via CMS platform and DNS. One of the mirror sites has about 400 indexed pages and has Moz DA of 42 and 137k External Equity-Passing Links. Full metrics comparison is attached. I originally planned on doing rel="canonical" on the mirror site but the CMS vendor never even heard of it and is refusing to implement it in the header. My only other option is doing one to one 301 redirects. Since the mirror site ranks well, even competes with main domain for some positions on the 1st page of SERP, what will be the impact after the redirects? Is doing 301's still the best option? Thanks! PrUpN3q
Moz Pro | | dasickle0 -
GOOGLE ANALYTIC SKEWED DATA BECAUSE OF GHOST REFERRAL SPAM ND CRAWL BOTS
Hi Guys, We are having some major problems with our Google Analytics and MOz account. Due to the large number of ghost/referral spam and crawler bots we have added some heavy filtering to GA. This seems to be working protecting the data from all these problems but also filtering out much needed data that is not coming through. In example, we used to get a hundred visitors a day at the least and now we are down to under ten. ANYBODY PLEASE HELP. HAVE READ THROUGH MANY ARTICLES WITH NO FIND TO PERMANENT SOLID SOLUTION (even willing to go with paid service instead of GA) Thank You so Much, S.M.
Moz Pro | | KristyKK0 -
Woocommerce filter urls showing in crawl results, but not indexed?
I'm getting 100's of Duplicate Content warnings for a Woocommerce store I have. The urls are
Moz Pro | | JustinMurray
etc These don't seem to be indexed in google, and the canonical is for the shop base url. These seem to be simply urls generated by Woocommerce filters. Is this simply a false alarm from Moz crawl?0 -
Whether or not to remove a link from a website with high spam score on Open Site Explorer
Hello Moz! I just subscribed for your Moz Pro program. Amazing stuff! On open site explorer, I found a number of links to my site from a page called with a very high page authority and high domain authority, but also a high spam score (8 or 9, one with a 10). I say multiple spam scores, because it's strange, there are what appears variations of the same url, and each one is considered a link. For instance, there's an abc.linkstomysite.com and xyz.linktomysite.com, and 123.linktomysite.com... there are about 15 of these (all with the spam scores mentioned above)! This must have been some old SEO work done I payed for back in the prehistoric SEO days. However, my fear is the following: Removing these links, and then losing some potentially strong link juice. I don't have many high DA or PA links to my site, and these are some major ones. The domain in question "linktomysite.com", when entered into OSE, only has a spam score of 4, and it has a domain authority of 45 and page authority of 37. My site has a spam score of 2 and no messages from google regarding a penalty, but an overall reduction in google traffic over the years (just keeps slowly dropping... as if a weight is pulling me down?) What do you think, should I leave, or remove? The linkstomysite page is just a LONG page full of links, with short descriptions, nothing of value, but with a an old domain age (relatively). Most important for me is keeping at least some ranking/visibility, while I personally work on building quality links and helpful content. thanks!
Moz Pro | | DavidC.0 -
Can increasing website pages decrease domain authority?
Hello Mozzers! Say there is a website with 100 pages and a domain authority of 25. If the number of pages on this website increases to 10,000 can that decrease its domain authority or affect it in any way?
Moz Pro | | MozAddict0 -
Best Chrome extension to find contact emails on a website
Hi, I've done some digging around the Q and A and SEOMoz articles. Still not finding exactly what I need. I'm just looking for a tool that will quickly help me find the best contact email on a particular website. Whether it be the one the site is registered to a different one or both. Thanks in advance for the help. Aaron
Moz Pro | | arkana0 -
How to download an entire Website (HTML only), ready to rehost
Hi all, I work for a large retail brand and we have lots of counterfeit sites ranking for our products. Our legal team seizes the websites from the owners who then setup more counterfeit sites and so forth. As soon as we seize control of a website, the site content is deleted and subsequently it falls out of the SERPs to be immediately replaced by the next lot of counterfeit sites. I need to be able to download a copy of the site before it is seized, so that once I have control of it I can put the content back and hopefully quickly regain the SERPs (with an additional 'counterfeit site' notice superimposed on that page in JS). Does anyone know or can recommend good software to be able to download an entire website, so that it can be easily rehosted? Thanks FashionLux (Edited title to reflect only wanting to download html, CSS and images of site. I don't want the sites to actually be functional - only appear the same to Google)
Moz Pro | | FashionLux0