What does double slash (//) directory mean in robots.txt?
up vote
2
down vote
favorite
You will get the following output with:
curl https://www.ibm.com/robots.txt
I delete many lines, keeping only part of it.
User-agent: *
Disallow: //
Disallow: /account/registration
Disallow: /account/mypro
Disallow: /account/myint
# Added to block site mirroring
User-agent: HTTrack
Disallow: /
#
I understand that / means root directory, but what does double slash // directory mean here in robots.txt?
linux home-directory
edited Nov 27 at 1:52
JakeGould
30.9k1093137
asked Nov 27 at 1:44
scrapy
1885
add a comment |
up vote
2
down vote
favorite
You will get the following output with:
curl https://www.ibm.com/robots.txt
I delete many lines, keeping only part of it.
User-agent: *
Disallow: //
Disallow: /account/registration
Disallow: /account/mypro
Disallow: /account/myint
# Added to block site mirroring
User-agent: HTTrack
Disallow: /
#
I understand that / means root directory, but what does double slash // directory mean here in robots.txt?
linux home-directory
edited Nov 27 at 1:52
JakeGould
30.9k1093137
asked Nov 27 at 1:44
scrapy
1885
2
It could be a typo, I can't find a single reference to a double slash in any of the official Robot Exclusion documents.
– Michael Frank
Nov 27 at 1:51
@MichaelFrank Typo or a coding fluke made by an automated system generating arobots.txton demand.
– JakeGould
Nov 27 at 2:00
add a comment |
up vote
2
down vote
favorite
up vote
2
down vote
favorite
You will get the following output with:
curl https://www.ibm.com/robots.txt
I delete many lines, keeping only part of it.
User-agent: *
Disallow: //
Disallow: /account/registration
Disallow: /account/mypro
Disallow: /account/myint
# Added to block site mirroring
User-agent: HTTrack
Disallow: /
#
I understand that / means root directory, but what does double slash // directory mean here in robots.txt?
linux home-directory
edited Nov 27 at 1:52
JakeGould
30.9k1093137
asked Nov 27 at 1:44
scrapy
1885
You will get the following output with:
curl https://www.ibm.com/robots.txt
I delete many lines, keeping only part of it.
User-agent: *
Disallow: //
Disallow: /account/registration
Disallow: /account/mypro
Disallow: /account/myint
# Added to block site mirroring
User-agent: HTTrack
Disallow: /
#
I understand that / means root directory, but what does double slash // directory mean here in robots.txt?
linux home-directory
linux home-directory
edited Nov 27 at 1:52
JakeGould
30.9k1093137
asked Nov 27 at 1:44
scrapy
1885
edited Nov 27 at 1:52
JakeGould
30.9k1093137
asked Nov 27 at 1:44
scrapy
1885
edited Nov 27 at 1:52
JakeGould
30.9k1093137
edited Nov 27 at 1:52
JakeGould
30.9k1093137
edited Nov 27 at 1:52
JakeGould
30.9k1093137
30.9k1093137
asked Nov 27 at 1:44
scrapy
1885
asked Nov 27 at 1:44
scrapy
1885
asked Nov 27 at 1:44
scrapy
1885
1885
2
It could be a typo, I can't find a single reference to a double slash in any of the official Robot Exclusion documents.
– Michael Frank
Nov 27 at 1:51
@MichaelFrank Typo or a coding fluke made by an automated system generating arobots.txton demand.
– JakeGould
Nov 27 at 2:00
add a comment |
2
It could be a typo, I can't find a single reference to a double slash in any of the official Robot Exclusion documents.
– Michael Frank
Nov 27 at 1:51
@MichaelFrank Typo or a coding fluke made by an automated system generating arobots.txton demand.
– JakeGould
Nov 27 at 2:00
2
2
It could be a typo, I can't find a single reference to a double slash in any of the official Robot Exclusion documents.
– Michael Frank
Nov 27 at 1:51
It could be a typo, I can't find a single reference to a double slash in any of the official Robot Exclusion documents.
– Michael Frank
Nov 27 at 1:51
@MichaelFrank Typo or a coding fluke made by an automated system generating a
robots.txt on demand.– JakeGould
Nov 27 at 2:00
@MichaelFrank Typo or a coding fluke made by an automated system generating a
robots.txt on demand.– JakeGould
Nov 27 at 2:00
add a comment |
1 Answer
1
active
oldest
votes
up vote
1
down vote
accepted
This seems like a mistake:
Disallow: //
The thing is that the robots.txt spec—as outlined here—clearly states:
Note also that globbing and regular expression are not supported in either the User-agent or Disallow lines. The '*' in the User-agent field is a special value meaning "any robot". Specifically, you cannot have lines like "User-agent: bot", "Disallow: /tmp/*" or "Disallow: *.gif".
But some people claim that is not the case such as this site that states that Google can handle pattern matching:
Pattern matching: At this time, pattern matching appears to be usable by the three majors: Google, Yahoo, and Live Search. The value of pattern matching is considerable. Let’s look first at the most basic of pattern matching, using the asterisk wildcard character.
But regardless of that, the // means a literal directory of a directory with no name attached to that directory since there is no wildcard (*) globbing or anything there. And // just seems odd.
My guess is it’s a mistake of some sort. Yes, an IBM webmaster can make mistakes! But I would also guess that the robots.txt is automatically generated by some system and somehow a path such as /*/ was converted to // when the robots.txt was automatically generated by the system.
answered Nov 27 at 1:58
JakeGould
30.9k1093137
Either that, or the entry is there specifically to prevent mistake URLs with a redundant slash from being indexed.
– grawity
Nov 27 at 5:51
@grawity Fair enough but I am not too sure what the benefit would be to have a URL that isexample.com//thingas some odd method of obscuring data from crawlers.
– JakeGould
Nov 27 at 16:28
add a comment |
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1 Answer
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active
oldest
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1 Answer
1
active
oldest
votes
active
oldest
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active
oldest
votes
up vote
1
down vote
accepted
This seems like a mistake:
Disallow: //
The thing is that the robots.txt spec—as outlined here—clearly states:
Note also that globbing and regular expression are not supported in either the User-agent or Disallow lines. The '*' in the User-agent field is a special value meaning "any robot". Specifically, you cannot have lines like "User-agent: bot", "Disallow: /tmp/*" or "Disallow: *.gif".
But some people claim that is not the case such as this site that states that Google can handle pattern matching:
Pattern matching: At this time, pattern matching appears to be usable by the three majors: Google, Yahoo, and Live Search. The value of pattern matching is considerable. Let’s look first at the most basic of pattern matching, using the asterisk wildcard character.
But regardless of that, the // means a literal directory of a directory with no name attached to that directory since there is no wildcard (*) globbing or anything there. And // just seems odd.
My guess is it’s a mistake of some sort. Yes, an IBM webmaster can make mistakes! But I would also guess that the robots.txt is automatically generated by some system and somehow a path such as /*/ was converted to // when the robots.txt was automatically generated by the system.
answered Nov 27 at 1:58
JakeGould
30.9k1093137
Either that, or the entry is there specifically to prevent mistake URLs with a redundant slash from being indexed.
– grawity
Nov 27 at 5:51
@grawity Fair enough but I am not too sure what the benefit would be to have a URL that isexample.com//thingas some odd method of obscuring data from crawlers.
– JakeGould
Nov 27 at 16:28
add a comment |
up vote
1
down vote
accepted
This seems like a mistake:
Disallow: //
The thing is that the robots.txt spec—as outlined here—clearly states:
Note also that globbing and regular expression are not supported in either the User-agent or Disallow lines. The '*' in the User-agent field is a special value meaning "any robot". Specifically, you cannot have lines like "User-agent: bot", "Disallow: /tmp/*" or "Disallow: *.gif".
But some people claim that is not the case such as this site that states that Google can handle pattern matching:
Pattern matching: At this time, pattern matching appears to be usable by the three majors: Google, Yahoo, and Live Search. The value of pattern matching is considerable. Let’s look first at the most basic of pattern matching, using the asterisk wildcard character.
But regardless of that, the // means a literal directory of a directory with no name attached to that directory since there is no wildcard (*) globbing or anything there. And // just seems odd.
My guess is it’s a mistake of some sort. Yes, an IBM webmaster can make mistakes! But I would also guess that the robots.txt is automatically generated by some system and somehow a path such as /*/ was converted to // when the robots.txt was automatically generated by the system.
answered Nov 27 at 1:58
JakeGould
30.9k1093137
Either that, or the entry is there specifically to prevent mistake URLs with a redundant slash from being indexed.
– grawity
Nov 27 at 5:51
@grawity Fair enough but I am not too sure what the benefit would be to have a URL that isexample.com//thingas some odd method of obscuring data from crawlers.
– JakeGould
Nov 27 at 16:28
add a comment |
up vote
1
down vote
accepted
up vote
1
down vote
accepted
This seems like a mistake:
Disallow: //
The thing is that the robots.txt spec—as outlined here—clearly states:
Note also that globbing and regular expression are not supported in either the User-agent or Disallow lines. The '*' in the User-agent field is a special value meaning "any robot". Specifically, you cannot have lines like "User-agent: bot", "Disallow: /tmp/*" or "Disallow: *.gif".
But some people claim that is not the case such as this site that states that Google can handle pattern matching:
Pattern matching: At this time, pattern matching appears to be usable by the three majors: Google, Yahoo, and Live Search. The value of pattern matching is considerable. Let’s look first at the most basic of pattern matching, using the asterisk wildcard character.
But regardless of that, the // means a literal directory of a directory with no name attached to that directory since there is no wildcard (*) globbing or anything there. And // just seems odd.
My guess is it’s a mistake of some sort. Yes, an IBM webmaster can make mistakes! But I would also guess that the robots.txt is automatically generated by some system and somehow a path such as /*/ was converted to // when the robots.txt was automatically generated by the system.
answered Nov 27 at 1:58
JakeGould
30.9k1093137
This seems like a mistake:
Disallow: //
The thing is that the robots.txt spec—as outlined here—clearly states:
Note also that globbing and regular expression are not supported in either the User-agent or Disallow lines. The '*' in the User-agent field is a special value meaning "any robot". Specifically, you cannot have lines like "User-agent: bot", "Disallow: /tmp/*" or "Disallow: *.gif".
But some people claim that is not the case such as this site that states that Google can handle pattern matching:
Pattern matching: At this time, pattern matching appears to be usable by the three majors: Google, Yahoo, and Live Search. The value of pattern matching is considerable. Let’s look first at the most basic of pattern matching, using the asterisk wildcard character.
But regardless of that, the // means a literal directory of a directory with no name attached to that directory since there is no wildcard (*) globbing or anything there. And // just seems odd.
My guess is it’s a mistake of some sort. Yes, an IBM webmaster can make mistakes! But I would also guess that the robots.txt is automatically generated by some system and somehow a path such as /*/ was converted to // when the robots.txt was automatically generated by the system.
answered Nov 27 at 1:58
JakeGould
30.9k1093137
answered Nov 27 at 1:58
JakeGould
30.9k1093137
answered Nov 27 at 1:58
JakeGould
30.9k1093137
answered Nov 27 at 1:58
JakeGould
30.9k1093137
30.9k1093137
Either that, or the entry is there specifically to prevent mistake URLs with a redundant slash from being indexed.
– grawity
Nov 27 at 5:51
@grawity Fair enough but I am not too sure what the benefit would be to have a URL that isexample.com//thingas some odd method of obscuring data from crawlers.
– JakeGould
Nov 27 at 16:28
add a comment |
Either that, or the entry is there specifically to prevent mistake URLs with a redundant slash from being indexed.
– grawity
Nov 27 at 5:51
@grawity Fair enough but I am not too sure what the benefit would be to have a URL that isexample.com//thingas some odd method of obscuring data from crawlers.
– JakeGould
Nov 27 at 16:28
Either that, or the entry is there specifically to prevent mistake URLs with a redundant slash from being indexed.
– grawity
Nov 27 at 5:51
Either that, or the entry is there specifically to prevent mistake URLs with a redundant slash from being indexed.
– grawity
Nov 27 at 5:51
@grawity Fair enough but I am not too sure what the benefit would be to have a URL that is
example.com//thing as some odd method of obscuring data from crawlers.– JakeGould
Nov 27 at 16:28
@grawity Fair enough but I am not too sure what the benefit would be to have a URL that is
example.com//thing as some odd method of obscuring data from crawlers.– JakeGould
Nov 27 at 16:28
add a comment |
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2
It could be a typo, I can't find a single reference to a double slash in any of the official Robot Exclusion documents.
– Michael Frank
Nov 27 at 1:51
@MichaelFrank Typo or a coding fluke made by an automated system generating a
robots.txton demand.– JakeGould
Nov 27 at 2:00