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.
WEbsite cannot be crawled
-
I have received the following message from MOZ on a few of our websites now
Our crawler was not able to access the robots.txt file on your site. This often occurs because of a server error from the robots.txt. Although this may have been caused by a temporary outage, we recommend making sure your robots.txt file is accessible and that your network and server are working correctly. Typically errors like this should be investigated and fixed by the site webmaster.
I have spoken with our webmaster and they have advised the below:
The Robots.txt file is definitely there on all pages and Google is able to crawl for these files. Moz however is having some difficulty with finding the files when there is a particular redirect in place.
For example, the page currently redirects from threecounties.co.uk/ to https://www.threecounties.co.uk/ and when this happens, the Moz crawler cannot find the robots.txt on the first URL and this generates the reports you have been receiving. From what I understand, this is a flaw with the Moz software and not something that we could fix form our end.
_Going forward, something we could do is remove these rewrite rules to www., but these are useful redirects and removing them would likely have SEO implications. _
Has anyone else had this issue and is there anything we can do to rectify, or should we leave as is?
-
Ok, I made a quick test of your robot.txt file and looks fine,
https://www.threecounties.co.uk/robots.txtThen I made a test https://httpstatus.io/ to check the status code
of your robot.txt file and show me 200 status code (So it's fine)Also, you need to make sure that your robot.txt file is accessible for the Rogerbot (Moz crawler)
This day the hosting providers have become very strict with third-party crawlers
This includes Moz, Majestic SEO, Semrush and Ahrefs.Here you can find all the possible sources of the problem and recommended solutions
https://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/help/guides/moz-pro-overview/site-crawl/unable-to-crawlRegards
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
-
Potential spam websites with high DA linking back to us
Hey everybody, I'm going through all my sites and disavowing crap links. However, I'm having trouble distinguishing which high DA sites to disavow. What would you do? For example:
Moz Pro | | MEllsworth
https://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/researchtools/ose/spam-analysis?site=busca.starmedia.com&target=domain&source=subdomain&page=1&sort=spam_score and https://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/researchtools/ose/spam-analysis?site=cc879fe.activerain.com&target=domain&source=subdomain&page=1&sort=spam_score They both have tons of backlinks - both good and crap. The first has a DA of 72 and a Moz spam score of 4/17 and the second has a DA of 86 and a Moz spam score of 9/171 -
Block Moz (or any other robot) from crawling pages with specific URLs
Hello! Moz reports that my site has around 380 duplicate page content. Most of them come from dynamic generated URLs that have some specific parameters. I have sorted this out for Google in webmaster tools (the new Google Search Console) by blocking the pages with these parameters. However, Moz is still reporting the same amount of duplicate content pages and, to stop it, I know I must use robots.txt. The trick is that, I don't want to block every page, but just the pages with specific parameters. I want to do this because among these 380 pages there are some other pages with no parameters (or different parameters) that I need to take care of. Basically, I need to clean this list to be able to use the feature properly in the future. I have read through Moz forums and found a few topics related to this, but there is no clear answer on how to block only pages with specific URLs. Therefore, I have done my research and come up with these lines for robots.txt: User-agent: dotbot
Moz Pro | | Blacktie
Disallow: /*numberOfStars=0 User-agent: rogerbot
Disallow: /*numberOfStars=0 My questions: 1. Are the above lines correct and would block Moz (dotbot and rogerbot) from crawling only pages that have numberOfStars=0 parameter in their URLs, leaving other pages intact? 2. Do I need to have an empty line between the two groups? (I mean between "Disallow: /*numberOfStars=0" and "User-agent: rogerbot")? (or does it even matter?) I think this would help many people as there is no clear answer on how to block crawling only pages with specific URLs. Moreover, this should be valid for any robot out there. Thank you for your help!0 -
Special Characters in URL & Google Search Engine (Index & Crawl)
G'd everyone, I need help with understanding how special characters impact SEO. Eg. é , ë ô in words Does anyone have good insights or reference material regarding the treatment of Special Characters by Google Search Engine? how Page Title / Meta Desc with Special Chars are being index & Crawl Best Practices when it comes to URLs - uses of Unicode, HTML entity references - when are where? any disadvantage using special characters Does special characters in URL have any impact on SEO performance & User search, experience. Thanks heaps, Amy
Moz Pro | | LabeliumUSA0 -
Crawlers crawl weird long urls
I did a crawl start for the first time and i get many errors, but the weird fact is that the crawler tracks duplicate long, not existing urls. For example (to be clear): there is a page: www.website.com/dogs/dog.html but then it is continuing crawling:
Moz Pro | | r.nijkamp
www.website.com/dogs/dog.html
www.website.com/dogs/dogs/dog.html
www.website.com/dogs/dogs/dogs/dog.html
www.website.com/dogs/dogs/dogs/dogs/dog.html
www.website.com/dogs/dogs/dogs/dogs/dogs/dog.html what can I do about this? Screaming Frog gave me the same issue, so I know it's something with my website0 -
Problem crawling a website with age verification page.
Hy every1, Need your help very urgent. I need to crawl a website that first has a page where you need to put your age for verification and after that you are redirected to the website. My problem is that SEOmoz, crawls only that first page, not the whole website. How can I crawl the whole website?, do you need me to upload a link to the website? Thank you very much Catalin
Moz Pro | | catalinmoraru0 -
Adding new categories to my website and getting them ranked
Hi, I currently run a website and have added a couple of new categories lately. The website is Planes Trains Automobiles Co UK. For example I want to add "Planes for sale" as a new category. What is the best way to go about this? Will each aircraft added add content therefore ranking? I don't want to approach an SEO company yet as the service would be free for the time being? Thanks
Moz Pro | | PlanesTrainsAutos0 -
How can a site have a backlink from Barclays website?
Hi, I have entered a competitiors website www.my-wardrobe.com into Open Site to see who they get links from and to my surprise they have a load from Barclays Business Banking. When I visit the page I can not see the links. But if I search the pages source code for my-wardrobe, there I have it, a link to my-wardrobe.com. How have they done this? Surely Barclays haven't sold them it? And more so, why are they receiving link juice when you cant even see the link on the Barclays page in question - http://www.barclays.co.uk/BusinessBanking/P1242557952664 Thanks | |
Moz Pro | | YNWA
| | <a <span="">href</a><a <span="">="</a>http://www.my-wardrobe.com" class="popup" title="Link opens in a new window" rel='' onmousedown="dcsMultiTrack('DCS.dcsuri','BusinessBankingfromBarclays/Footer/wwwmywardrobecom', 'WT.ti', '','WT.dl','1');"> |
| | www.my-wardrobe.com |
| |
|
| | |0
