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.
Robots.txt & Disallow: /*? Question!
-
Hi,
I have a site where they have:
Disallow: /*?
Problem is we need the following indexed:
?utm_source=google_shopping
What would the best solution be? I have read:
User-agent: *
Allow: ?utm_source=google_shopping
Disallow: /*?Any ideas?
-
User-agent: * Disallow: /cgi-bin/ Disallow: /wp-admin/ Disallow: /archives/ Disallow: /? Allow: /comments/feed/ Disallow: /refer/ Disallow: /index.php Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/ Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php User-agent: Mediapartners-Google* Allow: / User-agent: Googlebot-Image Allow: /wp-content/uploads/ User-agent: Adsbot-Google Allow: / User-agent: Googlebot-Mobile Allow: / Sitemap: https://site.com/sitemap_index.xml
use this it will help you and your problem will solve
Regards
-
User-agent: * Disallow: /cgi-bin/ Disallow: /wp-admin/ Disallow: /archives/ Disallow: /? Allow: /comments/feed/ Disallow: /refer/ Disallow: /index.php Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/ Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php User-agent: Mediapartners-Google* Allow: / User-agent: Googlebot-Image Allow: /wp-content/uploads/ User-agent: Adsbot-Google Allow: / User-agent: Googlebot-Mobile Allow: / Sitemap: https://site.com/sitemap_index.xml
this will work ??
Regards
Sajad -
User-agent: * Disallow: /cgi-bin/ Disallow: /wp-admin/ Disallow: /archives/ Disallow: /*?* Allow: /comments/feed/ Disallow: /refer/ Disallow: /index.php Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/ Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php User-agent: Mediapartners-Google* Allow: / User-agent: Googlebot-Image Allow: /wp-content/uploads/ User-agent: Adsbot-Google Allow: / User-agent: Googlebot-Mobile Allow: / Sitemap: https://site.com/sitemap_index.xml use this it will help you Regards [Saad](https://clicktestworld.com/) -
Hi Jeff,
Robots.txt tester as per the above link is definitely worth playing with and is the easiest route to achieving what you want.
Another reactive way of managing this is in some cases is to simply see the range of parameters Google has naturally crawled within Search Console.
You can see this in the old search console for now. So login and go to Crawl --> URL Parameters.
If Googlebot has encountered any ?=params it will list them. You'll then have an option how to manage them or exclude them from the index.
It can be a decent way of cleaning up a site with lot's of indexed pages (1,000+), although please be sure to read this documentation before using it: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6080548?hl=en
-
With this kind of thing, it's really better to pick the specific parameters (or parameter combinations) which you'd like to exclude, e.g:
User-agent: *Disallow: /shop/product/&size=*
Disallow: */shop/product/*?size=*Disallow: /stockists?product=*
^ I just took the above from a robots.txt file which I have been working on, as these particular pages don't have 'pretty' URLs with unique content on. Very soon now that will change and the blocks will be lifted
If you are really 100% sure that there's only one param which you want to let through, then you'd go with:
User-agent: *Disallow: /?
Allow: /?utm_source=google_shopping
Allow: /*&utm_source=google_shopping*(or something pretty similar to that!)
Before you set anything live, get down a list of URLs which represent the blocks (and allows) which you want to achieve. Test it all with the Robots.txt tester (in Search Console) before you set anything live!
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
-
Block session id URLs with robots.txt
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: *
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mat_C
Disallow: ?filter= or User-agent: *
Disallow: /?filter= In other words, is the forward slash in the beginning of the disallow directive necessary? Thanks!1 -
SEO Best Practices regarding Robots.txt disallow
I cannot find hard and fast direction about the following issue: It looks like the Robots.txt file on my server has been set up to disallow "account" and "search" pages within my site, so I am receiving warnings from the Google Search console that URLs are being blocked by Robots.txt. (Disallow: /Account/ and Disallow: /?search=). Do you recommend unblocking these URLs? I'm getting a warning that over 18,000 Urls are blocked by robots.txt. ("Sitemap contains urls which are blocked by robots.txt"). Seems that I wouldn't want that many urls blocked. ? Thank you!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jamiegriz0 -
[Very Urgent] More 100 "/search/adult-site-keywords" Crawl errors under Search Console
I just opened my G Search Console and was shocked to see more than 150 Not Found errors under Crawl errors. Mine is a Wordpress site (it's consistently updated too): Here's how they show up: Example 1: URL: www.example.com/search/adult-site-keyword/page2.html/feed/rss2 Linked From: http://an-adult-image-hosting.com/search/adult-site-keyword/page2.html Example 2 (this surprised me the most when I looked at the linked from data): URL: www.example.com/search/adult-site-keyword-2.html/page/3/ Linked From: www.example.com/search/adult-site-keyword-2.html/page/2/ (this is showing as if it's from our own site) http://a-spammy-adult-site.com/search/adult-site-keyword-2.html Example 3: URL: www.example.com/search/adult-site-keyword-3.html Linked From: http://an-adult-image-hosting.com/search/adult-site-keyword-3.html How do I address this issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rmehta10 -
Will disallowing URL's in the robots.txt file stop those URL's being indexed by Google
I found a lot of duplicate title tags showing in Google Webmaster Tools. When I visited the URL's that these duplicates belonged to, I found that they were just images from a gallery that we didn't particularly want Google to index. There is no benefit to the end user in these image pages being indexed in Google. Our developer has told us that these urls are created by a module and are not "real" pages in the CMS. They would like to add the following to our robots.txt file Disallow: /catalog/product/gallery/ QUESTION: If the these pages are already indexed by Google, will this adjustment to the robots.txt file help to remove the pages from the index? We don't want these pages to be found.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andyheath0 -
Should I use meta noindex and robots.txt disallow?
Hi, we have an alternate "list view" version of every one of our search results pages The list view has its own URL, indicated by a URL parameter I'm concerned about wasting our crawl budget on all these list view pages, which effectively doubles the amount of pages that need crawling When they were first launched, I had the noindex meta tag be placed on all list view pages, but I'm concerned that they are still being crawled Should I therefore go ahead and also apply a robots.txt disallow on that parameter to ensure that no crawling occurs? Or, will Googlebot/Bingbot also stop crawling that page over time? I assume that noindex still means "crawl"... Thanks 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ntcma0 -
Robots.txt, does it need preceding directory structure?
Do you need the entire preceding path in robots.txt for it to match? e.g: I know if i add Disallow: /fish to robots.txt it will block /fish
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Milian
/fish.html
/fish/salmon.html
/fishheads
/fishheads/yummy.html
/fish.php?id=anything But would it block?: en/fish
en/fish.html
en/fish/salmon.html
en/fishheads
en/fishheads/yummy.html
**en/fish.php?id=anything (taken from Robots.txt Specifications)** I'm hoping it actually wont match, that way writing this particular robots.txt will be much easier! As basically I'm wanting to block many URL that have BTS- in such as: http://www.example.com/BTS-something
http://www.example.com/BTS-somethingelse
http://www.example.com/BTS-thingybob But have other pages that I do not want blocked, in subfolders that also have BTS- in, such as: http://www.example.com/somesubfolder/BTS-thingy
http://www.example.com/anothersubfolder/BTS-otherthingy Thanks for listening0 -
301 redirect with /? in URL
For a Wordpress site that has the ending / in the URL with a ? after it... how can you do a 301 redirect to strip off anything after the / For example how to take this URL domain.com/article-name/?utm_source=feedburner and 301 to this URL domain.com/article-name/ Thank you for the help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | COEDMediaGroup0 -
Robots.txt: Can you put a /* wildcard in the middle of a URL?
We have noticed that Google is indexing the language/country directory versions of directories we have disallowed in our robots.txt. For example: Disallow: /images/ is blocked just fine However, once you add our /en/uk/ directory in front of it, there are dozens of pages indexed. The question is: Can I put a wildcard in the middle of the string, ex. /en/*/images/, or do I need to list out every single country for every language in the robots file. Anyone know of any workarounds?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IHSwebsite0