I was checking the Google Search Console coverage report and found that lots of our forum pages are blocked by robots.txt. So I went ahead and checked the robots.txt. Then I found that semrushbot and ahrefsbot are blocked by default: [image] I know these are two widely used SEO tools, why blocking…

[image] Jamie_Liu1: I know these are two widely used SEO tools, why blocking their bots? Because they suck? They add a lot of server load for no discernable benefit, and our customers do have pageview limits on their plans.

[image] Jamie_Liu1: I know these are two widely used SEO tools, why blocking their bots? Because those bots are “resource sucking bot hogs” which provide very little value to sites compared to the amount of resources these bots consume. Of course, you can customize the Discourse robots.txt f…

Thanks so much for the information! I found another issue and maybe you can share your insight on it as well. :slight_smile: I know Discourse has blocked user pages by default, but in my Google Search Console coverage report, there are still some user pages indexed, which is an issue in Google’s e…

This was fixed recently with FIX: add noindex header to user profile pages. committed 05:56AM - 08 Jan 20 UTC (UTC) [image] vinothkannans +4 -…

@osioke Thanks for your reply! I believe our installed version already has the feature? Because I noticed that the fix was committed in Jan. [image] Could you please verify if I need to upgrade to the latest version to have this feature?

It doesn’t hurt to update IMO, but yes, that fix should be in your installed version. I would try updating and reverifying unless you don’t want to update for some other reason.

Sounds good. We are updating now. Hope things will work out after the update. I’ll get back and keep you informed. :slight_smile: Thanks!

Just to clarify, is there no way to unblock semrushbot and seo spider? We need them for SEO audit. Tried removing both from /admin/customize/robots (also tried Allow: ) but we get 429 error in Screaming Frog. Or is this 429 error a separate issue? Your insights are highly appreciated.

[image] trying2survive: Just to clarify, is there no way to unblock semrushbot and seo spider? Did you try this (but use your container name)? Note: you can also configure this in the Admin UI: # docker exec -it socket-only bash root@socket-only:/# rails c [1] pry(main)> SiteSetting.blocked…

Why semrushbot and ahrefsbot are blocked by default?

Support

Johani (Joe) December 2, 2020, 4:34pm 11

429 errors mean that those crawlers are getting rate-limited. Discourse has some throttling enabled by default to prevent abuse. You can read more about this here.

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Why semrushbot and ahrefsbot are blocked by default?

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