Error Code 612 with Squarespace

[BrownBox]

Hi Moz community,
I'm getting an apparent error code 612 on my homepage. I've checked my robot.txt file with https://httpstatus.io/ as well as https://webmaster.yandex.com/ like others have suggested, but they are both showing nothing wrong. Is this something to do with square space? Is it incompatible with Moz? My site is https://brownbox.ca

Thanks.

[jocameron]

Hey there!

Thanks of reaching out, Jo from the Moz help team here.

This is most likely a Squarespace issue as they automatically block our bots from the robots.txt and if rogerbot can't get to the robots.txt then the crawling stops. Please pop an email over to help@moz.com and we can check this is definitely the cause and get a workaround in place for you.

Cheers!
Jo

[BrownBox]

Thanks for the prompt reply, will send an email now! I'll share results if I get any

[Hurf]

SquareSpace doesn't play along nicely with Moz. I first contacted SquareSpace about this, a year ago, here's their reply:

"Thanks for reaching out!

I'm sorry for the troubles with this. Our developers have this as a known issue and are working on a fix with Moz, they're aware of the issue as well and looking to update their system so we do not block them.

I've marked this message for follow up and we'll let you know as soon as this is resolved.

I apologize for the inconvenience of this and thank you for your patience...."

Then, some months later, this:

"Thanks for getting back to us, and re-opening this dialoge. I'm happy to get a status check running for you here.

Now, I am able to see that our engineers and Moz's were working on this together, and it looks like they made progress, but most of that conversation happens away from Customer Care.

With that in mind, can you reply to this email, and let me know if you are still experiencing this? I'm guessing probably so, but I just need to confirm that, before next steps here. Also, can you let me know which of your sites are affected by this?"

I await their update 6 months on...

I'm afraid to say that this issue led to me shelving Moz for a while. However, after much encouragement, I got my SquareSpace clients to move over to another CMS, so I'm back. Hurrah!

I also spoke to a Moz staff member a week or so ago and they are aware of an issue and can offer a workaround of sorts, but you will still be limited to which tools will function correctly with SquareSpace.

I hope that helps.

[sarai_vee]

I also use squarespace and got the same 612 error code for my homepage today. www.riverrunnersusa.com. When MOZ crawled it for the first time the other day it didn't have a problem so I am wondering if it is something different that is causing the error for my site. Any ideas?

Thanks

Sarah