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.
Oh no googlebot can not access my robots.txt file
-
I just receive a n error message from google webmaster
Wonder it was something to do with Yoast plugin.
Could somebody help me with troubleshooting this?
Here's original message
Over the last 24 hours, Googlebot encountered 189 errors while attempting to access your robots.txt. To ensure that we didn't crawl any pages listed in that file, we postponed our crawl. Your site's overall robots.txt error rate is 100.0%.
Recommended action
If the site error rate is 100%:
- Using a web browser, attempt to access http://www.soobumimphotography.com//robots.txt. If you are able to access it from your browser, then your site may be configured to deny access to googlebot. Check the configuration of your firewall and site to ensure that you are not denying access to googlebot.
- If your robots.txt is a static page, verify that your web service has proper permissions to access the file.
- If your robots.txt is dynamically generated, verify that the scripts that generate the robots.txt are properly configured and have permission to run. Check the logs for your website to see if your scripts are failing, and if so attempt to diagnose the cause of the failure.
If the site error rate is less than 100%:
- Using Webmaster Tools, find a day with a high error rate and examine the logs for your web server for that day. Look for errors accessing robots.txt in the logs for that day and fix the causes of those errors.
- The most likely explanation is that your site is overloaded. Contact your hosting provider and discuss reconfiguring your web server or adding more resources to your website.
After you think you've fixed the problem, use Fetch as Google to fetch http://www.soobumimphotography.com//robots.txt to verify that Googlebot can properly access your site.
-
I can open text file but Godaddy told me robots.txt file is not on my server (root level).
Also told me that my site is not crawled because robot.txt file is not there.
Basically all of those might have resulted from plug in I was using (term optimizer)
Based on what Godaddy told me, my .htaccess file was crashed because of that and had to be recreated. So now .htaceess file is good.
Now I have to figure out is why my site is not accessible from Googlebot.
Let me know Keith if this is a quick fix or need some time to troubleshoot. You can send me a message to discuss about fees if nessary.
Thanks again
-
Hi,
You have a robots.txt file here: http://www.soobumimphotography.com/robots.txt
Can you write this again in English so it makes sense?
"I called Godaddy and told me if I used any plug ins etc. Godaddy fixed .htaccss file and my site was up and runningjust fine."
Yes google xml sitemaps will add the location of your stitemap to the robots.txt file - but there is nothing wrong with your robots.txt file.
-
I just called Godaddy and told me that I don't have robots.txt tile. Can anyone help with this issue?
So here's what happen:
I purchased Joos de Vailk's Term Optimizer to consolidate tags etc.
As soon as I installed & opened it, my site crashed.
I called Godaddy and told me if I used any plug ins etc. Godaddy fixed .htaccss file and my site was up and runningjust fine.
Isn't plugin like the Google XML Sitemaps automatically generates robots.txt file?
-
Yes, my site was down.
-
I had a .htaccess issue past 24 hour with plug in and Godaddy had fixed it for me.
I think this caused problem.
I just fetched again and still getting unreachable page. I wonder if I have bad .htaccess file
-
Was your site down during this period?
I would recommend setting up pingdom.com (free site monitoring), this will email you if your site goes down - I suspect this is a hosting related issue.
FYI, I can access your robots.txt fine from here.
-
Hi Bistoss, You should log into Google Webmaster Tools to check the day the problem occurred. It is not uncommon for host to have problems that temporarily cause access problems. In some rare cases Google itself could be having problems. For example, in July we had 1 day with a 11% failure rate, it was the host. Since then no problems. If your problems are persistent, then you may have an issue like this: http://blog.jitbit.com/2012/08/fixing-googlebot-cant-access-your-site.html old Analytic code. Other things to look at is any recent changes, specifically anything that had to do with .htaccess Be sure to use the FETCH AS GOOGLE bot after any changes to verify that Google can now crawl your site. Hope this helps
-
I also use Robots Meta Configuration plug in
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
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 | | Nomader1 -
Removing CSS & JS Files from Index
Hi, Google has indexed a few .CSS and .JS files that belong to our WordPress plugins and themes. I had them blocked via robots, but realized this doesn't prevent indexation (and can likely hurt us since Google wants to access these files). I've since removed the robots instructions, submitted a removal request via Search Console, but want to make sure they don't come back. Is there a way to put a noindex tag within .CSS and .JS files? Or should I do something with .htaccess instead?
Technical SEO | | kirmeliux1 -
Can too many pages hurt crawling and ranking?
Hi, I work for local yellow pages in Belgium, over the last months we introduced a succesfull technique to boost SEO traffic: we have created over 150k of new pages, all targeting specific keywords and all containing unique content, a site architecture to enable google to find these pages through crawling, xml sitemaps, .... All signs (traffic, indexation of xml sitemaps, rankings, ...) are positive. So far so good. We are able to quickly build more unique pages, and I wonder how google will react to this type of "large scale operation": can it hurt crawling and ranking if google notices big volumes of content (unique content)? Please advice
Technical SEO | | TruvoDirectories0 -
Location Based Content / Googlebot
Our website has local content specialized to specific cities and states. The url structure of this content is as follows: www.root.com/seattle www.root.com/washington When a user comes to a page, we are auto-detecting their IP and sending them directly to the relevant location based page - much the way that Yelp does. Unfortunately, what appears to be occurring is that Google comes in to our site from one of its data centers such as San Jose and is being routed to the San Jose page. When a user does a search for relevant keywords, in the SERPS they are being sent to the location pages that it appears that bots are coming in from. If we turn off the auto geo, we think that Google might crawl our site better, but users would then be show less relevant content on landing. What's the win/win situation here? Also - we also appear to have some odd location/destination pages ranking high in the SERPS. In other words, locations that don't appear to be from one of Google's data center. No idea why this might be happening. Suggestions?
Technical SEO | | Allstar0 -
Allow or Disallow First in Robots.txt
If I want to override a Disallow directive in robots.txt with an Allow command, do I have the Allow command before or after the Disallow command? example: Allow: /models/ford///page* Disallow: /models////page
Technical SEO | | irvingw0 -
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 | | MRCSearch0 -
Can I Disallow Faceted Nav URLs - Robots.txt
I have been disallowing /*? So I know that works without affecting crawling. I am wondering if I can disallow the faceted nav urls. So disallow: /category.html/? /category2.html/? /category3.html/*? To prevent the price faceted url from being cached: /category.html?price=1%2C1000
Technical SEO | | tylerfraser
and
/category.html?price=1%2C1000&product_material=88 Thanks!0 -
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 | | joshcanhelp0