What the f.....?
 

I have a domain http://www.torture.jp.net/ and checking my logs I found a hit on the index page from http://www.torture.jp.net/robots.txt. Which would mean someone checked robots.txt before looking at the main page. Only problem with this is that I do NOT have a robots.txt file on that domain!!! In other words, the hit came from a page that does not exist!

Is it possible that there is a "hidden" robots.txt file somewhere that I did not create, and does not show up on my FTP client? Because I am not only getting this strange referrer, but also Google refuses to index this domain, and I have got no hits from any search engine to this domain, ever. But all three things would make sense if there was a robots.txt file somewhere with a "no spider" rule set.

So you are saying that you are tortured by this conundrum.

That and I'd like to see some search engine traffic!

I'm no expert, but I'd assume that, if someone was looking for your robots.txt file, entered http://www.torture.jp.net/robots.txt into their browser, the .htaccess sends them to the index, since it's 404, hence a "referral" from a non-existing page.

Thanks, that makes sense. Sadly it also means there is no mysterious robots.txt keeping the search engines out, and that they all just hate my site.

Ahh, no that isn't it. Typing in http://www.torture.jp.net/robots.txt gives me "no referrer" and using the link in your post gives this thread as referrer.

|jester|

If I am reading your post correctly, you're saying that the referrer was from robots.txt

All respectable spiders check robots.txt first before spidering your site, I doubt they'd send that as the referrer - but maybe that's what happened? A spider checked robots.txt, used the last page it accessed as its referrer and hence what you saw in your logs.

Yes, but the problem is that there is NO robots.txt on that domain! However all the search engines appear to have refused to list that domain, as though there was a robots.txt file with a "no list" rule! So I was asking if it is possible for there to be a hidden robots.txt file that does not show up on FTP?

I doubt there can be a hidden robots.txt, unless there's a period before it - but then it wouldn't be robots.txt, it would be .robots.txt

Even if there is no robots.txt, a spider will still check for it. Does it show a 404 in your logs?

I just checked on this site.
http://www.seositecheckup.com

Says your title is only "torture". I am thinking it might help to make a longer title.

It does say you use a Robots.txt file. Have you added one?

It also has a link to a robots.txt file check in webmaster tools. May help to check it.
https://support.google.com/webmaster...er/156449?rd=1

Probably "torture" is not a happy word for the SEs. In 2013 I would be worried to hit that link.

Sorry, I read this and went to check out seositecheckup.com, then forgot to come back and thank all of you for your advice. So better late than never: Thanks.

thanks for the link

+1

I have been gone a while too. You are welcome.