WordPress robots.txt SEO

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WordPress robots.txt SEO

WordPress Blog robots.txt robotA robots.txt file can make a huge impact on your WordPress blogs traffic and search engine rank. This is an SEO optimized WordPress robots.txt file. Keep in mind that if you mess up the robots.txt file by blocking too much, you could lose all of your rank.

Note: This article is outdated, over the years I’ve learned to only use robots.txt as an authoritative blacklist. Now my robots.txt is much simpler and I rely on meta tags, as detailed in my SEO article.. sorry rozkan!

Download the complete file: WordPress robots.txt file

I was inspired to revisit this topic after reading Creating the ultimate WordPress robots.txt file, then I revisited this once again and created the: Updated WordPress robots.txt file

Google Says

Make use of the robots.txt file on your web server. This file tells crawlers which directories can or cannot be crawled. Make sure it’s current for your site so that you don’t accidentally block the Googlebot crawler.

header.php meta seo trick

Place this in your wordpress themes header.php file, if the page is a single, page, or if its the home page then the robots will index and follow links on it. Otherwise search engines will not index the pages but will still follow the links.

<?php if(is_single() || is_page() || is_home()) { ?>
    <meta name="googlebot" content="index,noarchive,follow,noodp" />
    <meta name="robots" content="all,index,follow" />
  <meta name="msnbot" content="all,index,follow" />
<?php } else { ?>
    <meta name="googlebot" content="noindex,noarchive,follow,noodp" />
    <meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow" />
  <meta name="msnbot" content="noindex,follow" />
<?php }?>

 

seo robots.txt

See the Updated WordPress robots.txt file

User-agent:  *
# disallow all files in these directories
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /z/j/
Disallow: /z/c/
Disallow: /stats/
Disallow: /dh_
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/
Disallow: /contact/
Disallow: /tag/
Disallow: /wp-content/b
Disallow: /wp-content/p
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/askapache/4
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/askapache/c
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/askapache/d
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/askapache/f
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/askapache/h
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/askapache/in
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/askapache/p
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/askapache/s
Disallow: /trackback/
Disallow: /*?*
Disallow: */trackback/

User-agent: Googlebot
# disallow all files ending with these extensions
Disallow: /*.php$
Disallow: /*.js$
Disallow: /*.inc$
Disallow: /*.css$
Disallow: /*.gz$
Disallow: /*.cgi$
Disallow: /*.wmv$
Disallow: /*.png$
Disallow: /*.gif$
Disallow: /*.jpg$
Disallow: /*.cgi$
Disallow: /*.xhtml$
Disallow: /*.php*
Disallow: */trackback*
Disallow: /*?*
Disallow: /z/
Disallow: /wp-*
Allow: /wp-content/uploads/
 

# allow google image bot to search all images
User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Allow: /*
 
# allow adsense bot on entire site
User-agent: Mediapartners-Google*
Disallow: /*?*
Allow: /z/
Allow: /about/
Allow: /contact/
Allow: /wp-content/
Allow: /tag/
Allow: /manual/*
Allow: /docs/*
Allow: /*.php$
Allow: /*.js$
Allow: /*.inc$
Allow: /*.css$
Allow: /*.gz$
Allow: /*.cgi$
Allow: /*.wmv$
Allow: /*.cgi$
Allow: /*.xhtml$
Allow: /*.php*
Allow: /*.gif$
Allow: /*.jpg$
Allow: /*.png$
 
# disallow archiving site
User-agent: ia_archiver
Disallow: /
 
# disable duggmirror
User-agent: duggmirror
Disallow: /

The Breakdown

disallow files in these directories

User-agent:  *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /z/j/
Disallow: /z/c/
Disallow: /stats/
Disallow: /dh_
Disallow: /about/
Disallow: /contact/
Disallow: /tag/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/
Disallow: /contact
Disallow: /wp-
Disallow: /feed/
Disallow: /trackback/

disallow all files ending with these extensions

User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /*.php$
Disallow: /*.js$
Disallow: /*.inc$
Disallow: /*.css$
Disallow: /*.gz$
Disallow: /*.wmv$
Disallow: /*.cgi$
Disallow: /*.xhtml$

disallow all files with ? in url

Disallow: /*?*

disable duggmirror

User-agent: duggmirror
Disallow: /

disallow WayBack archiving site

User-agent: ia_archiver
Disallow: /

allow google image bot to search all images

User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Disallow:
Allow: /*

allow adsense bot on entire site

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google*
Disallow:
Allow: /*

 

Google User-agents

Googlebot
crawl pages from our web index and our news index
Googlebot-Mobile
crawls pages for our mobile index
Googlebot-Image
crawls pages for our image index
Mediapartners-Google
crawls pages to determine AdSense content. We only use this bot to crawl your site if you show AdSense ads on your site.
Adsbot-Google
crawls pages to measure AdWords landing page quality. We only use this bot if you use Google AdWords to advertise your site. Find out more about this bot and how to block it from portions of your site.

 

Google Sponsored Robots.txt Articles

  1. Controlling how search engines access and index your website
  2. The Robots Exclusion Protocol
  3. robots.txt analysis tool
  4. Googlebot
  5. Inside Google Sitemaps: Using a robots.txt file
  6. All About Googlebot

 

AskApache Robots.txt Articles

 

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Reader Comments

  1. MakeMoney ~

    We try this robots for our blog. Hope get more value for SEO.

  2. francis ~

    Great! Thanks for sharing!

  3. marco ~

    I know that this article is outdated, but just one question.
    As far as I know, wildcards are not supported in robots.txt (it should be based only on substring matches: http://www.robotstxt.org/faq/robotstxt.html), only “User agent:*” is accepted.

    So are you sure your robots.txt (even the new one) works as you expect? Are then wildcards supported?

  4. Jonathan ~

    I have been doing some reading on SEO. I just read this blog. I am using a robots plug in. Is the robots plug in a complement or a replacement to your script? (I am a newbie. Please take it easy.)

  5. Vikram ~

    Thanks, thats what i was looking for, SEO friendly robots.txt

  6. AskApache ~

    @ira

    I would recommend much leaner, so you don’t block the wrong bot. Remember that robots.txt is taken quite literally/seriously by search engines, better to use meta tags for fine-grain access control. Nice work though!

    User-agent:  *
# disallow all files in these directories
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /stats/
Disallow: /dh_
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/
Disallow: /tag/
Disallow: /hakkinda/
Disallow: /iletisimvereklam/
Disallow: /wp-content/upgrade
Disallow: /wp-content/plugins
Disallow: /wp-content/languages
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/default
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/guzel-pro
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/wp-max
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/classic
Disallow: /.smileys
 
User-agent: Googlebot
# disallow all files ending with these extensions
Disallow: /z/
Disallow: /wp-*
Allow: /wp-content/uploads/

 
# allow google image bot to search all images
User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Allow: /*

# allow adsense bot on entire site
User-agent: Mediapartners-Google*
Allow: /*
 
# disallow archiving site
User-agent: ia_archiver
Disallow: /

# disable duggmirror
User-agent: duggmirror
Disallow: /
  7. ira ~

    Hello Apache i am avid reader of your blog. I made a robots txt file based on the information you gave is it ok is there any mistakes? Thanks.

    User-agent:  *
# disallow all files in these directories
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /stats/
Disallow: /dh_
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/
Disallow: /tag/
Disallow: /hakkinda/
Disallow: /iletisimvereklam/
Disallow: /wp-content/upgrade
Disallow: /wp-content/plugins
Disallow: /wp-content/languages
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/default
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/guzel-pro
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/wp-max
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/classic
Disallow: /trackback/
Disallow: */trackback/
Disallow: /.smileys
 
User-agent: Googlebot
# disallow all files ending with these extensions
Disallow: /*.php$
Disallow: /*.js$
Disallow: /*.inc$
Disallow: /*.css$
Disallow: /*.gz$
Disallow: /*.cgi$
Disallow: /*.wmv$
Disallow: /*.png$
Disallow: /*.gif$
Disallow: /*.jpg$
Disallow: /*.cgi$
Disallow: /*.xhtml$
Disallow: /*.php*
Disallow: */trackback*
Disallow: /z/
Disallow: /wp-*
Allow: /wp-content/uploads/

 
# allow google image bot to search all images
User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Allow: /*

# allow adsense bot on entire site
User-agent: Mediapartners-Google*
Disallow: /*?*
Allow: /z/
Disallow: /hakkinda/
Disallow: /iletisimvereklam/
Allow: /wp-content/
Allow: /tag/
Allow: /manual/*
Allow: /docs/*
Allow: /*.php$
Allow: /*.js$
Allow: /*.inc$
Allow: /*.css$
Allow: /*.gz$
Allow: /*.cgi$
Allow: /*.wmv$
Allow: /*.cgi$
Allow: /*.xhtml$
Allow: /*.php*
Allow: /*.gif$
Allow: /*.jpg$
Allow: /*.png$

# disallow archiving site
User-agent: ia_archiver
Disallow: /

# disable duggmirror
User-agent: duggmirror
Disallow: /
  8. AskApache ~

    @rozkan

    dude this article is 2 years old.. this is a blog not an encyclopedia. Regardless of that, If you follow the instructions in this article you should be in really good shape.

    If you cut-and-paste my old robots.txt, didn’t even bother to check my actual one, and skipped reading the other newer articles here on my blog or anywhere else.. well geez man I’m sorry you had a problem but I can’t work miracles. I bet you did actually learn something when it all went wrong though, some people like to learn that way, I do it too sometimes. THINK before you copy.. I’m not your robot.

  9. rozkan ~

    Thanks genius! I used these commands for robots.txt and a week later i realized my new pages weren’t indexed by googlebot! By the way if this “ultimate super best robots.txt” why don’t YOU use it ha? I see your robots.txt file is pretty simple! So you are lying!

  10. GoSimple ~

    Perfect! Cheers.

  11. Jvistas ~

    This is what i looking for.
    Thanks

  12. Higgins ~

    That’s exactly the explanation I was looking for! Thanx

  13. Naina Susen ~

    This is what i was searching for, thanks a lot, it helped me a lot.

    -Naina

  14. Tyrone Campbell ~

    Thats a really good system and plugin since i run a wordpress mu site this will really help out people using the site, one other thing ive been looking for it a sitemap generator that works for wordpress mu, know of any? (email me answer please :D )

    thanks again!

  15. John Doro ~

    I’d like to try it, but how safe is this? Can we undo this and re-gain our PR supposed this customization won’t work?

  16. AskApache ~

    @ Rene

    Its a very confusing subject.. But you can find out what a robots.txt does in general just by reading through a couple posts on this blog.

    Basically this post is my best robots.txt at that point in time, and the robots.txt I have now is even better.. for me.

    All robots.txt does is tell search engines what to NEVER include in search engine results, so I have moved more towards keeping the robots.txt more open and using meta tags instead.

  17. Rene Dwight ~

    This is an amzing post but I have a couple of questions,,

    How can adding the above robots.txt file boost rank and add traffic?

    Also please forgive me if I am being dumb.. I checked the robots txt file for your site and it is not like the examples above? I don’t quite understand?

    Kindest regards Rene

  18. max ~

    Can you also include the noarchive command for the robots and msnbot lines, as well as the googlebot line? If not, why?

  19. eBlogger ~

    I was looking for a detailed Search Engine Optimization article on the robots.txt
    This is really detailed and useful.

    Thanks

    :-)

  20. derek ~

    Also could I do something like this?

    User-agent: *
    Disallow: */wp-content/
    Disallow: */wp-admin/
    Disallow: */wp-includes/
    Disallow: */wp-
    Disallow: */feed/
    Disallow: /trackback/
    Disallow: /cgi-bin/

  21. derek ~

    If I put my robots.txt in my root but have my blog installed in a subfolder how can I exclude correctly.
    I mean my cgi-bin folder would work but my blog is installed in a folder called blog which means /blog/wp-admin for instance
    how to disallow then?

  22. Lovedeep Wadhwa ~

    Amazing post. Thanks.

  23. Pablo Rosales ~

    Great!! This is exactly what I needed!

    I’ still not sure what exactly remove from your seo robots.txt but I will give it a try :)

  24. tech ~

    great archive for wordpress users !


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