If you’re blogging about domains and host advertising content, or developing web sites with content that is pulled remotely from another source, take notice.
Google has issued an update that has created a thorny problem overnight among web masters, developers and naturally, domain investors.
The issue lies with the blocking of resources via the robots.txt file; a file that most savvy web masters use to block search engines, including Google bots, from spidering certain parts of their online content.
Webmaster Tools will now show you any blocked resources.
Under the new directive, when a web page contains resources that are blocked, that page is rendered as “incomplete” by Google, and thus marked as less important in search results.
A quick solution: unblock Google completely, surrendering to this obvious “extortion” of sorts.
While this resolves the issue with files local to the particular web site, the problem remains for any resources that are outside of your control, which you choose to include and which themselves block Google.
For example: if you include a variety of ad widgets, promotional banners or other content from domain venues which so happen to block Google, that blocked content then creates an issue for your own pages that as a result, render as “incomplete.”
To see what Google sees and fix any blocked resources, one has to log into their domain via Webmaster Tools, click on Google Index and click on Blocked Resources. From there, you can determine what resource is being blocked and why.
The next step would be to fix that issue, either by permitting Google to access the resource, or by removing or altering the resource itself. For content that is not hosted on one’s own web site, the only solution is to remove the resource or contact the administrator of that web site to allow Google access via their respective robots.txt file.
It’s clearly a move that creates more work for web masters that must tailor their web sites to suit the ever-changing demands of Google.
For the Google announcement of the tool’s availability, click here.
