Indexed, though blocked by Robots.txt
Indexed, though blocked by Robots.txt, shows that even though your website URL is blocked by robots.txt, Google search engines index your website or page URL. But Google deliberates these URLs as warnings. But the good news is that you fix this issue from the robots.txt file and decide which pages need to be indexed. Now, since the page is indexed, what could be the problem? The page is seen in the search results, but the description, image, and non-HTML files are removed from the front. So, it is crucial to fix your robots.txt file.
Indexed, though blocked by Robots.txt, also shows that the search engine is having an issue indexing the page. When this problem arises, the page is indexed but not crawled. Let us discuss the point and how we can fix this problem. Here is the thing! Since we know that robots.txt tells the search engine to index pages or not, right? First, you need to work on having a well-structured robots.txt.
What are the other Possible Issues that Occur in Page Indexing?
- Other problems that can occur while indexing the page URL:
- Canonical tags in the HTML header.
- Broken links
- A directive that is the robots.txt file that stops indexing.
How to Find the Source of the Indexed, though blocked by Robots.txt, Issue?
If you are looking for an easy yet effective way to find the source of the issue, sign in to the Google search console and verify your website. So that you have access to your website performance and other reports.
You will find the index section once you have done the above process. Click on it, then click on the valid with the warning tab. This will provide you the list of errors occurring in the indexing, and it also includes Indexed, though blocked by Robots.txt. If you don’t see any of this issue, the page has no problem.
How to Fix Indexed, though blocked by Robots.txt Error?
Now that we have discussed all the possible issues with indexed, though blocked by Robots.txt, we must fix this issue. Before getting into solutions, make sure that the pages are already indexed in the Google search engine:
Edit Robots.txt File:
- If you are working on a wordpress, you have a virtual robots.txt file. It would help if you visited through your websitedomain.com/robots.txt in the web browser. But it would be best to remember that this virtual robots.txt is challenging to edit.
- So, if you want to edit the file quickly, you must create another file server. Select a text editor and create a new file in it. If you name it robots.txt, it will be more understandable for you. You can make any changes there if you like. Depending on what you want, you can edit the file with allow and disallow
Get SEO Plugin:
- If you are considering using an SEO plugin, you can go for the Yoast plugin because it is the most popular and effective. And when you have an SEO plugin, there is no need to create an entire robots.txt file from the beginning. And the best part is that you don’t need to leave the WordPress dashboard to edit the file.
- Yoast SEO plugin will provide in-depth on-page SEO analysis and other tools to help with different issues. The exact process is followed to create a robots.txt file in the yoast as the first method and apparent indexing issues.
Conclusion
We know that Google will find and index your pages in search results. However, any poorly configured robots.txt file interferes and will confuse the search engine whether to index the URL or ignore it. In this situation, you must clear the confusion, index the page, and improve your website SEO. To maintain your website, you can choose a good SEO web host so that it crawls at the top of search results.