AIOSEO ‘Your robots.txt file is missing or unavailable.’

  • Resolved carolinet24

    (@carolinet24)


    5 months, 2 weeks ago

    Hello,

    I had AIOSEO set up fine and the site was being crawled no problems. I recently installed Nitropack performance plugin and now AIOSEO says the robots.txt file is missing, Page Speed Insights also say one cannot be detected. When I checked https://revolutionheating.co.uk/robots.txt it is there though,

    I read online and was advised by Nitropack it might be the CDN blocking it, so I added ‘Disallow: /cdn-cgi/’ to the file, but that did not help.

    I am currently waiting for Nitropack to investigate this, but does it sound like I could do anything else to set it back up with AIOSEO in the meantime, or would that not help as it is just detecting whether or not it is there?

    Many thanks,

    Caroline

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • Thread Starter carolinet24

    (@carolinet24)

    Just to update: I deactivated a few plugins and I think its possibly a GDPR Compliance bar that was the culprit.

    AIOSEO now says everything is fine. Lighthouse with inspect tool says everything is fine. Google Console is able to access my robots.txt file fine. Page Speed Insights is still saying it is missing though.

    Any ideas?

    Plugin Support Prabhat

    (@prabhatrai)

    Hey @carolinet24,

    Thanks for reaching out!

    I checked the Robots.txt on your website and can confirm that it loads without any issues.

    I then tested the website using PageSpeed Insights and they’re also correctly detecting the file. Here’s a screen recording for a quick reference –

    https://a.supportally.com/v/gNF0x3

    It seems that PageSpeed Insights was earlier looking at a cached version of your website, and thus the file wasn’t detected. However, if you’re still seeing the issue in PageSpeed Insights, I’d recommend clearing your browser’s cache and see if that helps.

    With that said, I’d suggest adding a Disallow rule to the Robots.txt file for the /wp-admin/ path, as the admin area of your website doesn’t need to be crawled by the search engines.

    https://aioseo.com/docs/using-the-robots-txt-tool-in-all-in-one-seo/#aioseo-adding-rules-using-the-rule-builder

    Please feel free to let me know if you have any questions.

    Thanks!

    Thread Starter carolinet24

    (@carolinet24)

    Hi Prabhat,

    Thanks for your response!

    Since I posted here, my hosting said there was an issue with the robots.txt file that was generated by WordPress, so they created a new one. I did ask why they had not included disallow rules for the admin end of things, but couldn’t really get a straight answer from them as to whether I needed it. I did suspect I would.

    Everything seems to work fine since they created it. The only issue is that the AIOSEO plugin is telling me that it detects another robots.txt file in the root folder of my WordPress installation, and that it may cause a conflict. I mentioned this to my hosting and they said just wait and it should resolve itself.

    Is there a way to update AIOSEO with the new robots.txt file? I did think about using the custom robots.txt editor but didn’t want to cause a problem with duplicating the file.

    Many thanks!

    Plugin Support Prabhat

    (@prabhatrai)

    Hey @carolinet24,

    Firstly, its important to note that we don’t generate a Robots.txt file. Instead, we use the default virtual Robots.txt file that WordPress automatically generates.

    If your website/server has issues with the virtual file generated by WordPress, you can use the physical file that your hosting provider has created and safely ignore the notice shown by All in One SEO.

    Basically, we use the default WordPress Robots.txt file in our Robots.txt Editor and if that file isn’t generated, we show that notice.

    Since Robots.txt isn’t something that requires frequent changes in most cases, you can safely use the physical Robots.txt generated by your hosting provider – this will just prevent you from using our Robots.txt Editor and won’t cause any SEO issues –

    https://aioseo.com/docs/using-the-robots-txt-tool-in-all-in-one-seo/

    Please feel free to let me know if you have any questions.

    Thanks!

    Thread Starter carolinet24

    (@carolinet24)

    Hi Prabhat,

    That’s very helpful thank you. That’s good to know that the creation of a robots.txt by the hosting provider won’t cause any SEO problems, so I will just ignore the warning from the plugin.

    Just in regards to earlier messages in the thread, are you able to remove my website address from the first post at all? As I am unable to edit that out for some reason, and now this post is ranking for the business name.

    Thanks again!

    Plugin Support Prabhat

    (@prabhatrai)

    Hi @carolinet24,

    I’m sorry, but we can’t edit your reply to remove the link. Also, www.ads-software.com forums don’t allow editing replies after first 60 minutes of posting them as mentioned here –

    https://www.ads-software.com/support/forum-user-guide/faq/#how-can-i-fix-typos

    After the 60 minutes window, only the moderators can edit replies. However, unless it’s a legal or security issue, moderators don’t remove links as mentioned here –

    https://www.ads-software.com/support/forum-user-guide/faq/#will-you-delete-my-post-once-the-problem-is-solved

    Please let me know if you have any questions.

    Thanks!

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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