Disallow

Getting your website to rank higher is important and requires some adjustments. Entering a disallow may not help with this. But what is disallow and how do you make sure you apply it correctly? Here are the answers to these questions.

What is disallow?

Disallow is part of a robot.txt file, a piece of software that is one of the first things a bot checks on your Web site. With disallow, you specify that a bot should not visit a page, folder or file. This is a way to measure the SEO friendliness of your website.

Deploying disallow

To determine how relevant your website is, a search engine deploys bots that index and analyze your website. The bots check your website for all sorts of things, making it possible to rate your website. Among other things, this is a way to measure the SEO friendliness of your website.

Therefore, it is important to make sure that these bots check all pages to get the best results. Setting a page to disallow means that bots are not allowed to access it. This may result in a lower position in Google.

The impact of disallow on SEO

A disallow potentially has a big impact on the SEO of a website or page, and not always in a good way. Deploying a disallow on a page ensures that bots do not check it, potentially causing you to rank lower in Google. But when you enter a specific disallow, it is possible for bots to measure the site more specifically. This is another smart way to get good indexing of your website.

My advice

We recommend making good use of a disallow on your website. One way to do this is to make clear references in a robot.txt file: this reduces the chances of a lower search engine ranking. In addition, it is also advisable to test the robot.txt file for errors: this is possible with Google Webmaster Tools. It is always possible to hire an SEO specialist to take on these tasks.


Frequently Asked Questions

What is Disallow?

Disallow is part of the so-called robot.txt file. This is one of the first things a bot looks at when your website is scanned. With disallow, you can specify that the bot should not include a particular page, folder or file in the scan.

What is the impact of Disallow on SEO?

A disallow can certainly impact your site’s SEO. By using it, bots can measure much more specifically. This can have a beneficial effect on your site’s ranking. If you don’t apply it properly, they may skip parts, which will actually lower your ranking.

Senior SEO-specialist

Ralf van Veen

Senior SEO-specialist
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I have been working for 10 years as an independent SEO specialist for companies (in the Netherlands and abroad) that want to rank higher in Google in a sustainable manner. During this period I have consulted A-brands, set up large-scale international SEO campaigns and coached global development teams in the field of search engine optimization.

With this broad experience within SEO, I have developed the SEO course and helped hundreds of companies with improved findability in Google in a sustainable and transparent way. For this you can consult my portfolio, references and collaborations.

This article was originally published on 22 March 2024. The last update of this article was on 22 March 2024. The content of this page was written and approved by Ralf van Veen. Learn more about the creation of my articles in my editorial guidelines.