Removing robots.txt on WordPress site problem

[Wallander]

Hi..am a little confused since I ticked the box in WordPress to allow search engines to now crawl my site (previously asked for them not to) but Google webmaster tools is telling me I still have robots.txt blocking them so am unable to submit the sitemap.

Checked source code and the robots instruction has gone so a little lost. Any ideas please?

[NakulGoyal]

The robots.txt would probably not be a part of the Wordpress Configuration. Allow indexing is controlled via Meta Data by the Wordpress Architecture.

I would look for something like this in yourdomain.com/robots.txt

disallow /

or something like that. If that does not help, PM me your site URL and I would be glad to look it up for you.

[Copstead]

copy whatever you have in your robots.txt file here and we will tell you the issue.

SEOmoz has a great article about Robots.txt files here: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/robotstxt

[Anthony_NorthSEO]

Hi Sofia,

Two things you need to consider when troubleshooting this:

The actual robots.txt file (located in the root directory of your site) and the meta-robots tags in the section of your HTML. When you say you checked the source code and the robots instructions were missing, I think you were talking about the meta-robots tags in the actual HTML of your site.

Webmaster Tools is probably referring to the actual robots.txt file in your domain's root path, which would differ entirely and not be visible by checking the HTML on your site. Like Nakul and Brent said, if you'll let us know your site's URL and paste the content of your robots.txt file here, I'm sure one of us can help you resolve the problem fairly quickly.

Thanks!

Anthony

[Wallander]

Hey Guys,

Thanks for your replies...the domain is http://containerforsale.co.uk ,My host told me to look in the Public HTML file folder for the robots.txt file and just delete it but can't see it in there?

My host said he found a tester site and it doesn't report any issues:

http://www.searchenginepromotionhelp.com/m/robots-text-tester/robots-checker.php

This is the display I get from http://containerforsale.co.uk/robots.txt

User-agent *

Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/

Sitemap: http://containerforsale.co.uk/sitemap.xml.gz

[Copstead]

Doesn't appear to be blocked, so maybe it has something to do with your /wp-includes/ directory.

Change the robots.txt file to this:

User-agent *

Disallow:

Sitemap: http://containerforsale.co.uk/sitemap.xml.gz

[Wallander]

Its weird, the front page warning on Google webmaster for robots has disappeared now, but still got the warnings in the sitemap submission area. My host suggests I just wait a bit longer for Google to update because he said same as you - that there doesn't seem to be any robot.txt file.

[Copstead]

Well there is a robots.txt file.  You can view it here: http://containerforsale.co.uk/robots.txt

What warnings are you getting in your sitemap submission area?  It appears to look alright: http://containerforsale.co.uk/sitemap.xml  But I tried to validate it and got a 504 Gateway Time-out error. http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/index.php?op=validate-xml-sitemap&go=1&sitemapurl=http%3A%2F%2Fcontainerforsale.co.uk%2Fsitemap.xml&submit=Validate

[Wallander]

Thanks for the heads up.

The warning just says 7 Url''s blocked by robots.txt. - have seen this issue posted on the WordPress boards by others but no real insight into solutions.

Perhaps I should try your idea of

Change the robots.txt file to this:

User-agent *

Disallow:

Sitemap: http://containerforsale.co.uk/sitemap.xml.gz

[Copstead]

yes, the urls being blocked are includes from your Wordpress program.

[Wallander]

Ok thanks Brent, I changed to

User-agent: *

Disallow:

Sitemap: http://containerforsale.co.uk/sitemap.xml.gz

Guess I will just have to wait for Google to refresh now...

[evolvingSEO]

Thanks guys for all the responses and helping!

Three Things to try

1.Fix Robots.txt

Sofia - I just checked your robots.txt now and it reads;

User-agent: *

Disallow: Sitemap: http://containerforsale.co.uk/sitemap.xml.gz

• with the sitemap on the same line as disallow - I'd check on that and make sure its on a separate line.
• ALSO, you don't need the .gz on the sitemap file just sitemap.xml

2. Re-submit Sitemap

• RESUBMIT your sitemap to webmaster tools and make sure its valid.

3. Submit URL to Webmaster Tools (only last resort)

this is only last case scenario, shouldn't have to do this on the homepage if everything is correct.

• go to fetch as googlebot ->run the fetch ->then submit URL
• do this for the homepage
• see article on google blog for reference

Let us know if you're all set, thanks!

-Dan

[Wallander]

Indeed, thanks everyone - it's really appreciated!

I have updated the robots.txt as indicated and re submitted site map but looks like Google still has problems with my site since the error warning for robots is there after the processing is done.

Quick question - I am using a plugin called Google XML Sitemaps which has the following tick box option.

'Add sitemap URL to the virtual robots.txt file'.
The virtual robots.txt generated by WordPress is used. A real robots.txt file must NOT exist in the blog directory!'

Should this box be ticked or un-ticked please? Fyi I currently don't have the box ticked.

[evolvingSEO]

Sofia

You are using Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress, so use the XML sitemap within Yoast. You don't need a separate plugin for the XML sitemap. And yes, within Yoast turn the sitemap on.

Hope that helps!

-Dan

[Wallander]

Hi Dan,

I followed the above advice and switched to the Yoast generated sitemap but after testing on http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/validate-xml-sitemap.html I got the following result - no idea what it means but it looks nasty...

Schema validating with XSV 3.1-1 of 2007/12/11 16:20:05Schema validator crashed

The maintainers of XSV will be notified, you don't need to
send mail about this unless you have extra information to provide.
If there are Schema errors reported below, try correcting
them and re-running the validation.Target: http://containerforsale.co.uk
   (Real name: http://containerforsale.co.uk
    Server: Apache/2.2.22 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.22 OpenSSL/0.9.8e-fips-rhel5 mod_bwlimited/1.4)The target was not assessedLow-level XML well-formedness and/or validity processing output
Warning: Undefined entity raquo
 in unnamed entity at line 16 char 83 of http://containerforsale.co.uk
Warning: Undefined entity nbsp
 in unnamed entity at line 160 char 10 of http://containerforsale.co.uk
Error: Expected ; after entity name, but got =
 in unnamed entity at line 274 char 631 of http://containerforsale.co.u

[evolvingSEO]

Hi Sofia

I just ran the same validator on your sitemap and it went through fine - see screenshot

I intended to mean that you should just be sure Google Webmaster Tools accepts the sitemap as valid - if so, there's no need to run through a 3rd party validator. Apologies if I didn't state it clearly!

Let me know, but from what I can see it looks good!

-Dan

EDIT - Looking more closely, it looks like your ran the homepage through the validator - you would actually enter the sitemap address its self in the validator - http://containerforsale.co.uk/sitemap.xml

[Wallander]

Dan,

Cant thank you enough! The sitemap request is still pending in Google - maybe I sent too many requests But it's time to sit back and wait for the good news hopefully. Thanks again.

[Wallander]

Quick update - by amending the robots text file and switching sitemap plugin over to Yoast I finally got the sitemap to index without robots.txt warnings although the Home page of site was not indexed, 'oh dear'.  5 out of the 7 pages in the sitemap were indexed by Google so It's a start but some more investigating to be done on my side.

[evolvingSEO]

Hi Sophia

I just checked and see your homepage indexed in google.co.uk with a cache date of April 26th. You should be all set!

-Dan

[CMcCrone]

I can help you out as this issue DROVE ME NUTS.

1. I didnt have a Robots.txt (yet)

2. I had Yoast installed

3. Im pretty sure it created a Robots.txt even though it doesnt exist in my root (.com/here)

4. My Google webmaster tools shows this

User-agent: Disallow: /wp-admin/ Disallow: /wp-includes/ Disallow: /cgi-bin Disallow: /wp-admin Disallow: /wp-includes Disallow: /wp-content/plugins Disallow: /plugins Disallow: /wp-content/cache Disallow: /wp-content/themes Disallow: /trackback Disallow: /feed Disallow: /comments Disallow: /category//* Disallow: /trackback Disallow: /feed Disallow: /comments Disallow: /? Disallow: /?Allow: /wp-content/uploadsAllow: /assets Create a Robots.txt

1. login to wordpress 2. Click SEO in your side toolbar (Yoast WordPress Plugin settings) 3. Go to edit files under SEO (in the side toolbar)

And now you have the option to edit your Robots.txt file.