Google says: “Not allowed to crawl feed”

  • Resolved shields

    (@shields)


    7 years, 1 month ago

    When I submit my podcast to Google Music Podcast Publishing here https://play.google.com/music/podcasts/portal#p:id=playpodcast/all-podcasts, it gives me the following error:
    “Not allowed to crawl feed”

    When I email [email protected] about this, they say the problem is the absence of a robots.txt file in my podcast folder. But the absence of robots.txt means robots ARE allowed to crawl the folder. When I pointed this out, they persisted in saying there is no robots.txt file there.

    So I put an EMPTY robots.txt file in the podcasts folder, which tells robots that they are all permitted to crawl the site.

    When I told [email protected] I’d done this and still get the same error, they stopped talking with me.

    iTunes has no problem with the feed. Google won’t even look at it.

    Any ideas on how to proceed from here?

    I have no other plugins active on the site, and this is a fresh WordPress install.

    Thanks.

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

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Plugin Author Angelo Mandato

    (@amandato)

    Hello @shields,

    I checked the feed, one thing that stands out is your iTunes image is 3.8MB in size. IF you save the png as a jpg that image will fall to below 500KB. I am not 100% sure if that is the problem but I do know the image file size is limited on many networks and anything over 512KB for example is considered too large. On Apple iTunes for example, a larger image can take some time to update on the directory and in recent years they now resize them down if you make them that large (file size, not width height).

    Also, it appears your website is blocking our servers from accessing your feed, most likely a firewall thing. IF you have any security services or plugins, I would suggest turning them off, they may be blocking Google as well as Blubrry from accessing your podcast feed.

    One other thing you can try is to use our podcastmirror.com service, you can set it up, but not perform any redirection and only use Mirror for submitting to Google Play to get around any server blocking issues. Your server does not appear to be blocking PodcastMirror.com from my tests.

    Thanks,
    Angelo

    Thread Starter shields

    (@shields)

    Hmm…. Thanks Angelo.

    I opened a ticket with my hosting provider, relating your thoughts.

    We’ll see how things progress.

    Thread Starter shields

    (@shields)

    Angelo – the problem was that the feed was similar to another I had created and abandoned. Google fixed it. Thanks for your feedback.

    Plugin Support Shawn

    (@shawnogordo)

    Glad to see you were able to find a solution!

    If you’ve found the support we’ve provided here to be of value, please consider leaving a review for PowerPress.

    These reviews help us with future development of the plugin, and we’d really appreciate it!

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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