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  4. Block session id URLs with robots.txt

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Block session id URLs with robots.txt

Intermediate & Advanced SEO
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  • Mat_C
    Mat_C Subscriber last edited by Jul 8, 2019, 11:33 AM

    Hi,

    I would like to block all URLs with the parameter '?filter=' from being crawled by including them in the robots.txt.

    Which directive should I use:

    User-agent: *
    Disallow: ?filter=

    or

    User-agent: *
    Disallow: /?filter=

    In other words, is the forward slash in the beginning of the disallow directive necessary?

    Thanks!

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
    • Mat_C
      Mat_C Subscriber @Martijn_Scheijbeler last edited by Jul 9, 2019, 2:21 AM Jul 9, 2019, 2:21 AM

      Hi Martijn,

      Thanks for the answer. Regarding the forward slash in the beginning, is it necessary to use this?

      In the robots text from Zalando for example, you can see that they don't use it for a lot of filters.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Martijn_Scheijbeler
        Martijn_Scheijbeler @jasongmcmahon last edited by Nov 26, 2019, 5:10 AM Jul 9, 2019, 1:08 AM

        Uhh, that's not what the requester is looking for and could actually cause tons of problems if you would apply this on a site that you're unaware of. I would always go with the most limiting robots.txt that you can and in this case, I would go with: /?filter=

        Mat_C 1 Reply Last reply Jul 9, 2019, 2:21 AM Reply Quote 1
        • jasongmcmahon
          jasongmcmahon last edited by Jul 8, 2019, 8:47 PM Jul 8, 2019, 8:47 PM

          Hi,

          The following should suffice as it will black any URL with a "?" in it

          User-agent: *
          Disallow: /*?
          
          Martijn_Scheijbeler 1 Reply Last reply Jul 9, 2019, 1:08 AM Reply Quote 0
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