• majorAlexa

        See all notifications

        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.

          Let your business shine with Listings AI
          Moz Local

          Let your business shine with Listings AI

          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.

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
          Moz Pro

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

          Learn more
        • 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

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
          Moz API

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

          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
        • My Q&A
        • 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. Googlebot does not obey robots.txt disallow

        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.

        Googlebot does not obey robots.txt disallow

        Technical SEO
        4
        12
        3149
        Loading More Posts
        • Watching

          Notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread.

        • Not Watching

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread if category is not ignored.

        • Ignoring

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Do not show question in unread.

        • Oldest to Newest
        • Newest to Oldest
        • Most Votes
        Reply
        • Reply as question
        Locked
        This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
        • TalkInThePark
          TalkInThePark last edited by

          Hi Mozzers!

          We are trying to get Googlebot to steer away from our internal search results pages by adding a parameter "nocrawl=1" to facet/filter links and then robots.txt disallow all URLs containing that parameter.

          We implemented this late august and since that, the GWMT message "Googlebot found an extremely high number of URLs on your site", stopped coming.

          But today we received yet another. The weird thing is that Google gives many of our nowadays robots.txt disallowed URLs as examples of URLs that may cause us problems.

          What could be the reason?

          Best regards,

          Martin

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Cyrus-Shepard
            Cyrus-Shepard @TalkInThePark last edited by

            Sorry for the late reply. Feel free to send me a PM. (not sure I can help, but more than happy to take a look)

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • TalkInThePark
              TalkInThePark @TalkInThePark last edited by

              We do not currently have any sanitation rules in order to maintain the nocrawl param. But that is a good point. 301:ing will be difficult for us but I will definitely add the nocrawl param to the rel canonical of those internal SERPs.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • TalkInThePark
                TalkInThePark @Igal_Zeifman last edited by

                Thank you, Igol. I will definitely look into your first suggestion.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • TalkInThePark
                  TalkInThePark @Cyrus-Shepard last edited by

                  Thank you, Cyrus.

                  This is what it looks like:

                  User-agent: *
                  Disallow: /nocrawl=1

                  The weird thing is that when testing one of the sample URLs (given by Google as "problematic" in the GWMT message and that contains the nocrawl param) on the GWMT "Blocked URLs" page by entering the contents of our robots.txt and the sample URL, Google says crawling of the URL is disallowed for Googlebot.

                  On the top of the same page, it says "Never" under the heading "Fetched when" (translated from Swedish..). But when i "Fetch as Google" our robots.txt, Googlebot has no problems fetching it. So i guess the "Never" information is due to a GWMT bug?

                  I also tested our robots.txt against your recommended service http://www.frobee.com/robots-txt-check. It says all robots has access to the sample URL above, but I gather the tool is not wildcard-savvy.

                  I will not disclose our domain in this context, please tell me if it is ok to send you a PW.

                  About the noindex stuff. Basically, the nocrawl param is added to internal links pointing to internal search result pages filtered by more than two params. Although we allow crawling of less complicated internal serps, we disallow indexing of most of them by "meta noindex".

                  Cyrus-Shepard 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • Igal_Zeifman
                    Igal_Zeifman @Cyrus-Shepard last edited by

                    Thanks.

                    100% agree with the Meta Noindex suggestion.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • Cyrus-Shepard
                      Cyrus-Shepard last edited by

                      It can be tricky blocking parameters with robots.txt. The first thing you want to do is make sure your are actually blocking the URLs. There are a few good robots.txt checkers out there that can help:

                      • http://tool.motoricerca.info/robots-checker.phtml
                      • http://www.frobee.com/robots-txt-check

                      You're file is probably going to look something like:

                      User-agent: *
                      Disallow: /*?nocrawl=1

                      ... but this could vary depending on exactly you don't want crawled

                      +1 to Igal's suggestion of handling these via parameter settings in Google Webmaster Tools: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1235687

                      Finally, if your goal is to keep search results out of the index (it probably should be) then you should also highly consider using a meta robots NOINDEX tag on all search results pages. You can also slap a nofollow on links pointing to search results as this might also help Google steer clear of those pages.

                      Best of luck!

                      Edit: Here's what John Wu of Google Webmaster has to say...

                      "We show this warning when we find a high number of URLs on a site -- even before we attempt to crawl them. If you are blocking them with a robots.txt file, that's generally fine. If you really do have a high number of URLs on your site, you can generally ignore this message. If your site is otherwise small and we find a high number of URLs, then this kind of message can help you to fix any issues (or disallow access) before we start to access your server to check gazillions of URLs :-)."

                      Igal_Zeifman TalkInThePark 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 2
                      • Igal_Zeifman
                        Igal_Zeifman @TalkInThePark last edited by

                        Didn't say it wasn't. 🙂

                        I`m just not sure how these rules apply to parameters, since they are not a part of the "core" URL.

                        (For example: What happens if I take a URL from your site, change a nocrawl=1 to nocrawl=0 and link to it from mine?
                        Do you have any URL sanitation rules in place to overcome that or will the page be indexed by Googlebot when it crawls my site and moves on to yours?)

                        Personally, when dealing with parameters, I find it easier to work with WMT so I was offering an easier workaround, (at least for me)

                        To tell you the truth, I would use hard-coded on page meta noindex/nofollow here (again, as parameters can be so easily manipulated).

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                        • TalkInThePark
                          TalkInThePark @Igal_Zeifman last edited by

                          Igal, thank your for replying.

                          But robots.txt disallowing URLs by matching patterns has been supported by Googlebot for a long time now.

                          Igal_Zeifman TalkInThePark 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • Igal_Zeifman
                            Igal_Zeifman last edited by

                            Hi

                            I`m not sure if this is the best way to go about it.

                            Robots.txt is commonly used for folder level disallow rules, I`m not sure how it will respond to parameters.

                            Having said that, there are several things you can do here:

                            1. You can use WMT to zero in on this parameter and  prevent it from being searched.
                            To do so choose Configuration>>URL Parameters, answer "Yes" to the question about content change and  
                                check-in the 3rd bullet (Only URL with value...) Of course you'll need to choose "1" as the right value.

                            2. If this still didn't solve your issue, you might want to try using htacess + regex to prevent access by user agent.
                                You can find user-agent information here Googlebot user agent list

                            Also, you may want to check my blog post  about some of the less known Googlebot Facts (shameless self-promotion)

                            Best

                            Igal

                            TalkInThePark 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 1
                            • TalkInThePark
                              TalkInThePark @dmccarthy last edited by

                              I'll send you a PW, Des.

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

                                What the domain.?

                                TalkInThePark 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • 1 / 1
                                • First post
                                  Last post

                                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

                                • AmandaBridge

                                  Disallow wildcard match in Robots.txt

                                  This is in my robots.txt file, does anyone know what this is supposed to accomplish, it doesn't appear to be blocking URLs with question marks Disallow: /?crawler=1
                                  Disallow: /?mobile=1 Thank you

                                  Technical SEO | | AmandaBridge
                                  0
                                • Webicultors

                                  Is sitemap required on my robots.txt?

                                  Hi, I know that linking your sitemap from your robots.txt file is a good practice. Ok, but... may I just send my sitemap to search console and forget about adding ti to my robots.txt? That's my situation: 1 multilang platform which means... ... 2 set of pages. One for each lang, of course But my CMS (magento) only allows me to have 1 robots.txt file So, again: may I have a robots.txt file woth no sitemap AND not suffering any potential SEO loss? Thanks in advance, Juan Vicente Mañanas Abad

                                  Technical SEO | | Webicultors
                                  0
                                • Dan-Lawrence

                                  Staging & Development areas should be not indexable (i.e. no followed/no index in meta robots etc)

                                  Hi I take it if theres a staging or development area on a subdomain for a site, who's content is hence usually duplicate then this should not be indexable i.e. (no-indexed & nofollowed in metarobots) ? In order to prevent dupe content probs as well as non project related people seeing work in progress or finding accidentally in search engine listings ? Also if theres no such info in meta robots is there any other way it may have been made non-indexable, or at least dupe content prob removed by canonicalising the page to the equivalent page on the live site ? In the case in question i am finding it listed in serps when i search for the staging/dev area url, so i presume this needs urgent attention ? Cheers Dan

                                  Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence
                                  0
                                • Webmaster123

                                  I accidentally blocked Google with Robots.txt. What next?

                                  Last week I uploaded my site and forgot to remove the robots.txt file with this text: User-agent: * Disallow: / I dropped from page 11 on my main keywords to past page 50. I caught it 2-3 days later and have now fixed it. I re-imported my site map with Webmaster Tools and I also did a Fetch as Google through Webmaster Tools. I tweeted out my URL to hopefully get Google to crawl it faster too. Webmaster Tools no longer says that the site is experiencing outages, but when I look at my blocked URLs it still says 249 are blocked. That's actually gone up since I made the fix. In the Google search results, it still no longer has my page title and the description still says "A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt – learn more." How will this affect me long-term? When will I recover my rankings? Is there anything else I can do? Thanks for your input! www.decalsforthewall.com

                                  Technical SEO | | Webmaster123
                                  0
                                • lzhao

                                  Temporarily suspend Googlebot without blocking users

                                  We'll soon be launching a redesign, on a new platform, migrating millions of pages to new URLs. How can I tell Google (and other crawlers) to temporarily (a day or two) ignore my site?  We're hoping to buy ourselves a small bit of time to verify redirects and live functionality before allowing Google to crawl and index the new architecture. GWT's recommendation is to 503 all pages - including robots.txt, but that also makes the site invisible to real site visitors, resulting in significant business loss.  Bad answer. I've heard some recommendations to disallow all user agents in robots.txt.   Any answer that puts the millions of pages we already have indexed at risk is also a bad answer. Thanks

                                  Technical SEO | | lzhao
                                  0
                                • HMK-NL

                                  No indexing url including query string with Robots txt

                                  Dear all, how can I block url/pages with query strings like page.html?dir=asc&order=name with robots txt? Thanks!

                                  Technical SEO | | HMK-NL
                                  0
                                • themegroup

                                  Robots.txt file getting a 500 error - is this a problem?

                                  Hello all! While doing some routine health checks on a few of our client sites, I spotted that a new client of ours - who's website was not designed built by us - is returning a 500 internal server error when I try to look at the robots.txt file. As we don't host / maintain their site, I would have to go through their head office to get this changed, which isn't a problem but I just wanted to check whether this error will actually be having a negative effect on their site / whether there's a benefit to getting this changed? Thanks in advance!

                                  Technical SEO | | themegroup
                                  0
                                • JordanJudson

                                  Should I set up a disallow in the robots.txt for catalog search results?

                                  When the crawl diagnostics came back for my site its showing around 3,000 pages of duplicate content. Almost all of them are of the catalog search results page. I also did a site search on Google and they have most of the results pages in their index too. I think I should just disallow the bots in the /catalogsearch/ sub folder, but I'm not sure if this will have any negative effect?

                                  Technical SEO | | JordanJudson
                                  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.