I've come across an interesting situation several times over the years in the robots.txt file that can be difficult for site owners to understand. After surfacing and discussing how to Industry Email List fix it with customers, I find that many people aren't even aware that it can happen. And because it's a site's robots.txt file, it can potentially have a big impact on Industry Email List SEO. I'm referring to robots.txt files managed by a subdomain and a protocol. In other words, a site can have multiple robots.txt files running at the same time on or per And because Google manages each one separately, you can send very different instructions on
How the site should be crawled (or not crawled). In this article, I'll cover two real-life examples of sites that have experienced the issue, cover Google's robots.txt documentation, explain how to detect this, and provide several tips along the way based Industry Email List on helping customers with this situation. Let's crawl, I mean move. :) Robots.txt by subdomain Industry Email List and protocol I just mentioned above that Google manages robots.txt files by subdomain and protocol. For Industry Email List example, a site might have a robots.txt file on the non-www version, and a completely different one on the version.
I've seen this happen many times over the years helping clients and just did it again recently. Beyond www and non-www, a site can have a robots.txt file sitting at the https version of a subdomain, and then also at the http version of that subdomain. So similar Industry Email List to what I explained above, there could be multiple robots.txt files with different protocol-based instructions. Google's documentation clearly explains how it handles robots.txt files and I recommend that Industry Email List you read that document. Here are some examples they provide of how the instructions in the robots.txt file will be applied: