• 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. Google Search console says 'sitemap is blocked by robots?

        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.

        Google Search console says 'sitemap is blocked by robots?

        Technical SEO
        4
        10
        3310
        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.
        • Extima-Christian
          Extima-Christian last edited by

          Google Search console is telling me "Sitemap contains URLs which are blocked by robots.txt."

          I don't understand why my sitemap is being blocked? My robots.txt look like this:

          User-Agent: *
          Disallow:

          Sitemap: http://www.website.com/sitemap_index.xml

          It's a WordPress site, with Yoast SEO installed. Is anyone else having this issue with Google Search console? Does anyone know how I can fix this issue?

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • BlueprintMarketing
            BlueprintMarketing @Extima-Christian last edited by

            Nice happy to hear that do you work with Greg Reindel? He is a good friend I looked at your IP that is why I ask?

            Tom

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • BlueprintMarketing
              BlueprintMarketing @davebuts last edited by

              I agree with David

              Hey is your dev Greg Reindel? If so you can call me for help PM me here for my info.

              Thomas Zickell

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • Extima-Christian
                Extima-Christian last edited by

                Hey guys, I ended up disabling the sitemap option from YoastSEO, then installed the 'Google (XML) sitemap' plug-in. I re-submitted the sitemap to Google last night, and it came back with no issues. I'm glad to finally have this sorted out.

                Thanks for all the help!

                BlueprintMarketing 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • davebuts
                  davebuts last edited by

                  Hi Christian,

                  The current robots.txt shouldn't be blocking those URLs.

                  Did you or someone else recently change the robots.txt file? If so, give Google a few days to re-crawl your site.

                  Also, can you check what happens when you do a fetch and render on one of the blocked posts in Search Console? Do you have issues there?

                  Cheers,

                  David

                  BlueprintMarketing 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • BlueprintMarketing
                    BlueprintMarketing @Extima-Christian last edited by

                    I think you need to make an https robots.txt file if you are running https if running https

                    https://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/blog/xml-sitemaps

                    `User-agent: *
                    Disallow: /wp-admin/
                    Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php`
                    
                    Sitemap: https://domain.com/index-sitemap.xml
                    
                    (that is a https site map)
                    

                    can you send the sitemap URL or run it though deepcrawl

                    Hope this helps?

                    Did you make a new robots.txt file?

                    ShhJY55.png

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • Extima-Christian
                      Extima-Christian @Alick300 last edited by

                      Thanks for the response. Do you think this is a robots.txt issue? Or could this be caused by the YoastSEO plugin?

                      Do you know if this plug-in works with YoastSEO together? Or will it cause issues?

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • Extima-Christian
                        Extima-Christian @BlueprintMarketing last edited by

                        Thank you for the response.

                        I just scanned the site using 'Screaming frog'. Under Internal>Directives there were zero 'no index' links. I also check for '404 errors', server 505 errors, or anything 'blocked by robots.txt'.

                        Google search console is still showing me that there are URL's being blocked by my sitemap. (I added a screenshot of this). When I click through, it tells me that the 'post sitemap' has over +300 warnings.

                        I have just deleted the YoastSEO plugin, and I am now re-installing it. hopefully, this fixes the issue.

                        B7KE6nc ShhJY55

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

                          No, you do not need to change or plug-in what is happening is Webmaster tools is telling you that you have no index or no follow were robots xTag somewhere on your URLs inside your sitemap.

                          Run your site through Moz, screaming frog Seo spider or deepcrawl and look for no indexed URLs.

                          webmaster tools/search console is telling you that you have no index URLs inside of your XML sitemap not that you robots.txt is blocking it. This would be set in the Yoast plugin. one way to correct it is to look for noindex URLs &  filter them inside Yoast so they are not being presented to the crawlers.

                          If you would like you can turn off the sitemap on Yoast and turn it back on if that does not work I recommend completely removing the plug-in and reinstalling it

                          • https://kb.yoast.com/kb/how-can-i-uninstall-my-plugin/
                          • https://kinsta.com/blog/uninstall-wordpress-plugin/

                          Can you send a screenshot of what you're seeing?

                          When you see it in Google Webmaster tools are you talking about the XML sitemap itself mean no indexed because all XML sitemaps are no indexed.

                          Please add this to your robots.txt

                          `User-agent:*
                          Disallow:/wp-admin/
                          Allow:/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php` Sitemap: http://www.website.com/sitemap_index.xml
                          

                          I hope this is of help,

                          Tom

                          Extima-Christian 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                          • Alick300
                            Alick300 last edited by

                            Hi,

                            Use this plugin

                            https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-robots-txt/

                            it will remove previous robots.txt and set simple wordpress robots.txt and wait for a day

                            problem can be solved.

                            Also watch this video on the same @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZiyN07bbBM

                            Thanks

                            Extima-Christian 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

                            • Mike555

                              Google image search filter tabs and how to rank on them

                              I have noticed Google image search has included suggestion tabs (e.g,. design, nature... when searching background) on the top of the image search.
                              Are there specific meta tags I can add into my images so that my images will show up on each tab?
                              Do those filters just show content based on image keywords or something else? IRme7gQ

                              Technical SEO | | Mike555
                              0
                            • LivDetrick

                              Role of Robots.txt and Search Console parameters settings

                              Hi, wondering if anyone can point me to resources or explain the difference between these two. If a site has url parameters disallowed in Robots.txt is it redundant to edit settings in Search Console parameters to anything other than "Let Googlebot Decide"?

                              Technical SEO | | LivDetrick
                              0
                            • Nomader

                              Crawl solutions for landing pages that don't contain a robots.txt file?

                              My site (www.nomader.com) is currently built on Instapage, which does not offer the ability to add a robots.txt file. I plan to migrate to a Shopify site in the coming months, but for now the Instapage site is my primary website. In the interim, would you suggest that I manually request a Google crawl through the search console tool? If so, how often? Any other suggestions for countering this Meta Noindex issue?

                              Technical SEO | | Nomader
                              1
                            • MainstreamMktg

                              Hide sitelinks from Google search results

                              Does anyone have any recommendations on how you can tell Google (hopefully via a URL) not to index that page of a website? I have tried through SEO Yoast to hide certain sitemaps (which has worked to a degree) but certain functionalities of Wordpress websites show links without them actually being part of a "sitemap" so those links are harder to hide. I'm having an issue with one of my websites - the sitelinks that Google is suggesting are nowhere near the most popular pages and I know that you can't make recommendations through Google not to show certain pages through Search Console. anymore. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated! Thanks!

                              Technical SEO | | MainstreamMktg
                              0
                            • d.bird

                              Google has deindexed a page it thinks is set to 'noindex', but is in fact still set to 'index'

                              A page on our WordPress powered website has had an error message thrown up in GSC to say it is included in the sitemap but set to 'noindex'. The page has also been removed from Google's search results. Page is https://www.onlinemortgageadvisor.co.uk/bad-credit-mortgages/how-to-get-a-mortgage-with-bad-credit/ Looking at the page code, plus using Screaming Frog and Ahrefs crawlers, the page is very clearly still set to 'index'. The SEO plugin we use has not been changed to 'noindex' the page. I have asked for it to be reindexed via GSC but I'm concerned why Google thinks this page was asked to be noindexed. Can anyone help with this one? Has anyone seen this before, been hit with this recently, got any advice...?

                              Technical SEO | | d.bird
                              0
                            • blrs12

                              Good alternatives to Xenu's Link Sleuth and AuditMyPc.com Sitemap Generator

                              I am working on scraping title tags from websites with 1-5 million pages. Xenu's Link Sleuth seems to be the best option for this, at this point. Sitemap Generator from AuditMyPc.com seems to be working too, but it starts handing up, when a sitemap file, the tools is working on,becomes too large. So basically, the second one looks like it wont be good for websites of this size. I know that Scrapebox can scrape title tags from list of url, but this is not needed, since this comes with both of the above mentioned tools. I know about DeepCrawl.com also, but this one is paid, and it would be very expensive with this amount of pages and websites too (5 million ulrs is $1750 per month, I could get a better deal on multiple websites, but this obvioulsy does not make sense to me, it needs to be free, more or less). Seo Spider from Screaming Frog is not good for large websites. So, in general, what is the best way to work on something like this, also time efficient. Are there any other options for this? Thanks.

                              Technical SEO | | blrs12
                              0
                            • A_Q

                              Blank pages in Google's webcache

                              Hello all, Is anybody experiencing blanck page's in Google's 'Cached' view? I'm seeing just the page background and none of the content for a couple of my pages but when I click 'View Text Only' all of teh content is there. Strange! I'd love to hear if anyone else is experiencing the same. Perhaps this is something to do with the roll out of Google's updates last week?! Thanks,
                              Elias

                              Technical SEO | | A_Q
                              0
                            • MRCSearch

                              Robots.txt Sitemap with Relative Path

                              Hi Everyone, In robots.txt, can the sitemap be indicated with a relative path? I'm trying to roll out a robots file to ~200 websites, and they all have the same relative path for a sitemap but each is hosted on its own domain. Basically I'm trying to avoid needing to create 200 different robots.txt files just to change the domain. If I do need to do that, though, is there an easier way than just trudging through it?

                              Technical SEO | | MRCSearch
                              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.