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. SEO and Digital Marketing Q&A Forum
    2. Categories
    3. Technical SEO Issues
    4. How long does it take for traffic to bounce back from and accidental robots.txt disallow of root?

    How long does it take for traffic to bounce back from and accidental robots.txt disallow of root?

    Technical SEO Issues
    2 2 640
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it.
    • bheard
      bheard last edited by

      We accidentally uploaded a robots.txt disallow root for all agents last Tuesday and did not catch the error until yesterday.. so 6 days total of exposure. Organic traffic is down 20%. Google has since indexed the correct version of the robots.txt file. However, we're still seeing awful titles/descriptions in the SERPs and traffic is not coming back. GWT shows that not many pages were actually removed from the index but we're still seeing drastic rankings decreases.

      Anyone been through this? Any sort of timeline for a recovery?

      Much appreciated!

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

        I'd give it a month before you'll see that bounce back. I wouldn't expect the same rankings as before as Google will be reevaluating your pages, but you should have a pick up in traffic.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • 1 / 1
        • First post
          Last post
        • Will a robots.txt disallow apply to a 301ed URL?
          Martijn_Scheijbeler
          Martijn_Scheijbeler
          0
          3
          158

        • How long does it take before a site is back in the SERP after a manual spamaction is revoked
          LJDigital
          LJDigital
          0
          2
          81

        • Exclude root url in robots.txt ?
          mikehenze
          mikehenze
          0
          5
          122

        • Accidentally blocked whole site with robots.txt and struggling to regain rankings.
          SebastianCowie
          SebastianCowie
          0
          5
          998

        • Robots.txt to disallow /index.php/ path
          Mikkehl
          Mikkehl
          0
          9
          7.1k

        • Googlebot does not obey robots.txt disallow
          Cyrus-Shepard
          Cyrus-Shepard
          0
          12
          1.4k

        • Can I Disallow Faceted Nav URLs - Robots.txt
          AlanMosley
          AlanMosley
          0
          5
          914

        • Restricted by robots.txt and soft bounce issues (related).
          RyanKent
          RyanKent
          0
          4
          772

        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 - 2026 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
        • Accessibility
        • Terms of Use
        • Privacy