Unsolved Crawler was not able to access the robots.txt
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I'm trying to setup a campaign for jessicamoraninteriors.com and I keep getting messages that Moz can't crawl the site because it can't access the robots.txt. Not sure why, other crawlers don't seem to have a problem and I can access the robots.txt file from my browser. For some additional info, it's a SquareSpace site and my DNS is handled through Cloudflare. Here's the contents of my robots.txt file:
# Squarespace Robots Txt User-agent: GPTBot User-agent: ChatGPT-User User-agent: CCBot User-agent: anthropic-ai User-agent: Google-Extended User-agent: FacebookBot User-agent: Claude-Web User-agent: cohere-ai User-agent: PerplexityBot User-agent: Applebot-Extended User-agent: AdsBot-Google User-agent: AdsBot-Google-Mobile User-agent: AdsBot-Google-Mobile-Apps User-agent: * Disallow: /config Disallow: /search Disallow: /account$ Disallow: /account/ Disallow: /commerce/digital-download/ Disallow: /api/ Allow: /api/ui-extensions/ Disallow: /static/ Disallow:/*?author=* Disallow:/*&author=* Disallow:/*?tag=* Disallow:/*&tag=* Disallow:/*?month=* Disallow:/*&month=* Disallow:/*?view=* Disallow:/*&view=* Disallow:/*?format=json Disallow:/*&format=json Disallow:/*?format=page-context Disallow:/*&format=page-context Disallow:/*?format=main-content Disallow:/*&format=main-content Disallow:/*?format=json-pretty Disallow:/*&format=json-pretty Disallow:/*?format=ical Disallow:/*&format=ical Disallow:/*?reversePaginate=* Disallow:/*&reversePaginate=*
Any ideas?
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If a crawler cannot access the robots.txt file, it may be due to server misconfigurations, incorrect file permissions, or the file being missing. The robots.txt file is essential for guiding web crawlers on which pages they are allowed to access.
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Did you check google.com/webmasters/tools/robots-testing-tool ? all good here ?
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Hi Andrew,
It sounds like you're running into an issue with Moz being unable to access your robots.txt file, even though other crawlers and your browser can access it. Since your site is on SquareSpace and DNS is managed through Cloudflare, there could be a couple of things to consider:
Cloudflare Settings: Sometimes, Cloudflare's security settings (like firewall rules or bot management) can block certain bots, including Moz's crawler. You might want to check your Cloudflare settings to ensure that Moz’s IP addresses or user agents aren’t being inadvertently blocked.
Robots.txt Caching: Cloudflare may cache your robots.txt file. Try purging the cache for that file specifically to ensure the most up-to-date version is being served. This can sometimes resolve issues where different services see different versions of the file.
SquareSpace Configuration: Double-check if SquareSpace has any additional settings or restrictions that might affect how external crawlers, like Moz, interact with your site. Since SquareSpace handles a lot of things on the backend, their support might be able to provide more insight.
Allow Moz in robots.txt: If Moz’s specific user agent isn't listed in your robots.txt file, you could try explicitly allowing it by adding the following to the top of your file:
User-agent: rogerbot Allow: /
If the issue persists after checking these, reaching out to Moz support with specifics about your setup might help you get more targeted assistance.
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Hi @andrewrench!
Aneta from the help team here. I had a look at this for you and I can see that we are getting a 403 forbidden error when pinging your site. I would recommend looking into this and if you need any further help please don't hesitate to reach out to help@moz.com.
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