Google Search Console says "blocked" by robots.txt?

jimh

I'm new to SmugMug and not yet very far up the SEO learning curve, so cut me some slack. The first thing that I notice on GSC is that it currently reports 44 pages indexed but 159 "blocked" by robots.txt. And it shows me a robots.txt for my SM site that indeed seems to block many things.

Is this real? Why would SM be using a robots.txt?

Hikin' Mike

That's normal to use a robots.txt file to not allow indexing duplicate content (like keywords) and utility files.

jimh

Thanks, maybe if I look deeper GCS will show that the blocked files are in those categories.

jimh

Here's my next question.. GCS shows no sitemap. Supposedly SM handles that automatically, but it's been a few weeks. Do I need to submit one manually or is the sitemap just not relevant in this case?

Hikin' Mike

SmugMug creates your sitemap and you can submit it, but I quit submitting a sitemap to the websites I maintain. Google is pretty good with indexing any new content.

jimh

It's now been a few weeks since my SM site went live, and I'm trying to start understanding what GCS is telling me. I'm looking at 'Coverage" which, as I understand it, should show me the extent to which Google has now indexed my site. It shows 0 'Valid' pages and 24 'Excluded'. Is something that's supposed to be happening - not happening?

Hikin' Mike

@jimh said:
It's now been a few weeks since my SM site went live, and I'm trying to start understanding what GCS is telling me. I'm looking at 'Coverage" which, as I understand it, should show me the extent to which Google has now indexed my site. It shows 0 'Valid' pages and 24 'Excluded'. Is something that's supposed to be happening - not happening?

I don't trust GCS. If you want to see what pages are indexed, type in site:http://www.your-website-here.com in your browser. That should show all of the pages that Google (and other search engines) indexed.

jimh

I tried that and it shows.... well.... a bunch of pages on my site. Very far from all. But maybe it's a start.