• 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. 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
        1430
        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.
        • 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

                    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

                    • BrianAlpert78

                      Does a no-indexed parent page impact its child pages?

                      If I have a page* in WordPress that is set as private and is no-indexed with Yoast, will that negatively affect the visibility of other pages that are set as children of that first page? *The context is that I want to organize some of the pages on a business's WordPress site into silos/directories. For example, if the business was a home remodeling company, it'd be convenient to keep all the pages about bathrooms, kitchens, additions, basements, etc. bundled together under a "services" parent page (/services/kitchens/, /services/bathrooms/, etc.). The thing is that the child pages will all be directly accessible from the menus, so there doesn't need to be anything on the parent /services/ page itself. Another such parent page/directory/category might be used to keep different photo gallery pages together (/galleries/kitchen-photos/, /galleries/bathroom-photos/, etc.). So again, would it be safe for pages like /services/kitchens/ and /galleries/addition-photos/ if the /services/ and /galleries/ pages (but not /galleries/* or anything like that) are no-indexed? Thanks!

                      Technical SEO | | BrianAlpert78
                      1
                    • 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
                    • EcommerceSite

                      Do I need to block my cart page in robots.txt?

                      I have a site with woocommerce. Do I need to block the cart page?

                      Technical SEO | | EcommerceSite
                      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
                    • Mark_Ginsberg

                      Blocking Affiliate Links via robots.txt

                      Hi, I work with a client who has a large affiliate network pointing to their domain which is a large part of their inbound marketing strategy. All of these links point to a subdomain of affiliates.example.com, which then redirects the links through a 301 redirect to the relevant target page for the link. These links have been showing up in Webmaster Tools as top linking domains and also in the latest downloaded links reports. To follow guidelines and ensure that these links aren't counted by Google for either positive or negative impact on the site, we have added a block on the robots.txt of the affiliates.example.com subdomain, blocking search engines from crawling the full subddomain. The robots.txt file is the following code: User-agent: * Disallow: / We have authenticated the subdomain with Google Webmaster Tools and made certain that Google can reach and read the robots.txt file. We know they are being blocked from reading the affiliates subdomain. However, we added this affiliates subdomain block a few weeks ago to the robots.txt, but links are still showing up in the latest downloads report as first being discovered after we added the block. It's been a few weeks already, and we want to make sure that the block was implemented properly and that these links aren't being used to negatively impact the site. Any suggestions or clarification would be helpful - if the subdomain is being blocked for the search engines, why are the search engines following the links and reporting them in the www.example.com subdomain GWMT account as latest links. And if the block is implemented properly, will the total number of links pointing to our site  as reported in the links to your site section be reduced, or does this not have an impact on that figure?From a development standpoint, it's a much easier fix for us to adjust the robots.txt file than to change the affiliate linking connection from a 301 to a 302, which is why we decided to go with this option.Any help you can offer will be greatly appreciated.Thanks,Mark

                      Technical SEO | | Mark_Ginsberg
                      0
                    • NicDale

                      Is there any value in having a blank robots.txt file?

                      I've read an audit where the writer recommended creating and uploading a blank robots.txt file, there was no current file in place.  Is there any merit in having a blank robots.txt file? What is the minimum you would include in a basic robots.txt file?

                      Technical SEO | | NicDale
                      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
                    • joshcanhelp

                      Invisible robots.txt?

                      So here's a weird one... Client comes to me for some simple changes, turns out there are some major issues with the site, one of which is that none of the correct content pages are showing up in Google, just ancillary (outdated) ones. Looks like an issue because even the main homepage isn't showing up with a "site:domain.com" So, I add to Webmaster Tools and, after an hour or so, I get the red bar of doom, "robots.txt is blocking important pages." I check it out in Webmasters and, sure enough, it's a "User agent: * Disallow /" ACK! But wait... there's no robots.txt to be found on the server. I can go to domain.com/robots.txt and see it but nothing via FTP. I upload a new one and, thankfully, that is now showing but I've never seen that before. Question is: can a robots.txt file be stored in a way that can't be seen? Thanks!

                      Technical SEO | | joshcanhelp
                      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.