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        4. Block session id URLs with robots.txt

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        Block session id URLs with robots.txt

        Intermediate & Advanced SEO
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        • Mat_C
          Mat_C Subscriber last edited by

          Hi,

          I would like to block all URLs with the parameter '?filter=' from being crawled by including them in the robots.txt.

          Which directive should I use:

          User-agent: *
          Disallow: ?filter=

          or

          User-agent: *
          Disallow: /?filter=

          In other words, is the forward slash in the beginning of the disallow directive necessary?

          Thanks!

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • Mat_C
            Mat_C Subscriber @Martijn_Scheijbeler last edited by

            Hi Martijn,

            Thanks for the answer. Regarding the forward slash in the beginning, is it necessary to use this?

            In the robots text from Zalando for example, you can see that they don't use it for a lot of filters.

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

              Uhh, that's not what the requester is looking for and could actually cause tons of problems if you would apply this on a site that you're unaware of. I would always go with the most limiting robots.txt that you can and in this case, I would go with: /?filter=

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

                Hi,

                The following should suffice as it will black any URL with a "?" in it

                User-agent: *
                Disallow: /*?
                
                Martijn_Scheijbeler 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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