Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Turn SEO data into actionable content briefs

      Turn SEO data into actionable content briefs

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      Let your business shine with Listings AI

      Let your business shine with Listings AI

      Get found
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
      Moz API

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Technical SEO
    4. I have two robots.txt pages for www and non-www version. Will that be a problem?

    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.

    I have two robots.txt pages for www and non-www version. Will that be a problem?

    Technical SEO
    4
    6
    1537
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • ramb
      ramb last edited by

      There are two robots.txt pages. One for www version and another for non-www version though I have moved to the non-www version.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • jasongmcmahon
        jasongmcmahon last edited by

        It wont affect your SEO, you just don;t need the the non-https version

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • GastonRiera
          Gaston Riera @ramb last edited by

          Hi ramb,

          Short answer: No, it won't affect your ability to rank in Google. Unless both sites (non-www and www version) compete for the same search term and one of them isn't blocked in the correspondent robots.txt file.

          If you can, make sure to have a redirection rule so as everything in the non-www goes to the www.
          It bugs me why aren't you redirecting the complete non-www to the www version.
          Two possibilities come to my mind:

          1. You can't redirect the whole non-www due to some app or technical need. 
            In this case, both versions, if accessible to Google, will be treated as different sites. Thus, you must be sure that both robots file are correct for the given subdomain.
          2. You have a separate website, which contains different content from the www version (this usually happens with subdomains with different page types, such as products.abc.com and categories.abc.com)
            In this case, please be sure that you know what you want to be blocked and have each robots.txt file in their subdomain.

          Keep in mind that Robots file only controls where you don't want googlebot to access in the public version of your website. When a certain page or group of pages are blocked in robots.txt, google won't access them anymore thus not knowing if that page has what it needs to rank for any given search term. Google might rank lower and users will see a note in search results, leading to a lower CTR.

          Hope it helps.
          Best Luck.
          Gaston

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • Xiano
            Xiano Subscriber last edited by

            Are you redirecting everything on www to non-www? If so, you don't really need a robots.txt to be served for the www subdomain. Google will ignore the original robots.txt file if it is given a 301 anyway.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • ramb
              ramb last edited by

              Hi Gatson

              Thank you for your response. Currently, www version of the site is redirected to non-www version, which is the primary(or root) domain.

              But the problem is, I have 2 robots.txt files running for the same site. i.e. same robots.txt file loads on both www and non-www version. (Example https://www.abc.com/robots.txt and https://abc.com/robots.txt).

              Does it affect my site's SEO ??
              Should I redirect www-version of the file to non-www version?
              Your feedback will be highly appreciated.

              Thank you,

              R.

              GastonRiera 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • GastonRiera
                Gaston Riera last edited by

                Hi ramb,

                It's totally fine to have different robots.txt files for different subdomains.
                Thus said, http://domain.com and http://www.domain.com are different subdomains. Consider the one with non-www as the full root domain.

                In case it is needed, here you have Google's official resource about robots.txt: 
                Learn about Robots.txt file - Search Console help

                Hope it helps.
                Best luck.
                Gast

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                • 1 / 1
                • First post
                  Last post

                Got a burning SEO question?

                Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                Start my free trial


                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.

                • See all categories

                Related Questions

                • btreloar

                  Robots.txt Syntax for Dynamic URLs

                  I want to Disallow certain dynamic pages in robots.txt and am unsure of the proper syntax. The pages I want to disallow all include the string ?Page= Which is the proper syntax?
                  Disallow: ?Page=
                  Disallow: ?Page=*
                  Disallow: ?Page=
                  Or something else?

                  Technical SEO | | btreloar
                  0
                • I.AM.Strategist

                  Best Practice for www and non www

                  How is the best way to handle all the different variations of a website in terms of www | non www | http | https? In Google Search Console, I have all 4 versions and I have selected a preference. In Open Site Explorer I can see that the www and non www versions are treated differently with one group of links pointing to each version of the same page. This gives a different PA score. eg. http://mydomain.com DA 25 PA 35 http://www.mydomain.com DA 19 PA 21 Each version of the home page having it's only set of links and scores. Should I try and "consolidate" all the scores into one page? Should I set up redirects to my preferred version of the website? Thanks in advance

                  Technical SEO | | I.AM.Strategist
                  0
                • Cocoonfxmedia

                  301 Redirect non existant pages

                  Hi I have 100's of URL's appearing in Search Console for example: ?p=1_1 These go to on to 5_200 etc.. I have tried to do htaccess and the mod rewrite is on as I can redirect directories to the root i.e RewriteRule ^web_example(.*)$ /$1 [R=301,N,L] However I have tried all kinds of variations to redirect ?p= and either it doesn't work at all or it crashes the website. Can anyone point me in the right direction to fix this.

                  Technical SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia
                  0
                • imaginex

                  Should I block Map pages with robots.txt?

                  Hello, I have a website that was started in 1999. On the website I have map pages for each of the offices listed on my site, for which there are about 120. Each of the 120 maps is in a whole separate html page. There is no content in the page other than the map. I know all of the offices love having the map pages so I don't want to remove the pages. So, my question is would these pages with no real content be hurting the rankings of the other pages on our site? Therefore, should I block the pages with my robots.txt? Would I also have to remove these pages (in webmaster tools?) from Google for blocking by robots.txt to really work? I appreciate your feedback, thanks!

                  Technical SEO | | imaginex
                  0
                • TihomirPetrov

                  Www2 vs www problem

                  Hi, I have a website that has an old version and a new version. The content is not duplicate on the different versions.
                  The point is that the old version uses www. and non-www before the domain and the new one uses www2. My questions is: Is that a problem and what should be done? Thank you in advance!

                  Technical SEO | | TihomirPetrov
                  0
                • MickEdwards

                  Adding multi-language sitemaps to robots.txt

                  I am working on a revamped multi-language site that has moved to Magento.  Each language runs off the core coding so there are no sub-directories per language. The developer has created sitemaps which have been uploaded to their respective GWT accounts.  They have placed the sitemaps in new directories such as: /sitemap/uk/sitemap.xml /sitemap/de/sitemap.xml I want to add the sitemaps to the robots.txt but can't figure out how to do it.  Also should they have placed the sitemaps in a single location with the file identifying each language: /sitemap/uk-sitemap.xml /sitemap/de-sitemap.xml What is the cleanest way of handling these sitemaps and can/should I get them on robots.txt?

                  Technical SEO | | MickEdwards
                  0
                • KCBackofen

                  Will an XML sitemap override a robots.txt

                  I have a client that has a robots.txt file that is blocking an entire subdomain, entirely by accident. Their original solution, not realizing the robots.txt error, was to submit an xml sitemap to get their pages indexed. I did not think this tactic would work, as the robots.txt would take precedent over the xmls sitemap. But it worked... I have no explanation as to how or why. Does anyone have an answer to this? or any experience with a website that has had a clear Disallow: / for months , that somehow has pages in the index?

                  Technical SEO | | KCBackofen
                  0
                • bronxpad

                  Www vs non-www which is better?

                  Is it better to have all your pages point to the www version or non www version.

                  Technical SEO | | bronxpad
                  0

                Get started with Moz Pro!

                Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                Start my free trial
                Products
                • Moz Pro
                • Moz Local
                • Moz API
                • Moz Data
                • STAT
                • Product Updates
                Moz Solutions
                • SMB Solutions
                • Agency Solutions
                • Enterprise Solutions
                • Digital Marketers
                Free SEO Tools
                • Domain Authority Checker
                • Link Explorer
                • Keyword Explorer
                • Competitive Research
                • Brand Authority Checker
                • Local Citation Checker
                • MozBar Extension
                • MozCast
                Resources
                • Blog
                • SEO Learning Center
                • Help Hub
                • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                • How-to Guides
                • Moz Academy
                • API Docs
                About Moz
                • About
                • Team
                • Careers
                • Contact
                Why Moz
                • Case Studies
                • Testimonials
                Get Involved
                • Become an Affiliate
                • MozCon
                • Webinars
                • Practical Marketer Series
                • MozPod
                Connect with us

                Contact the Help team

                Join our newsletter
                Moz logo
                © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                • Accessibility
                • Terms of Use
                • Privacy

                Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.