Author Topic: Google "Not Allowed to Crawl Feed"  (Read 285 times)

Stephen Shields

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Google "Not Allowed to Crawl Feed"
« on: February 14, 2018, 09:44:02 am »
When I submit my podcast to Google Music Podcast Publishing here https://play.google.com/music/podcasts/portal#p:id=playpodcast/all-podcasts, it gives me the following error:
"Not allowed to crawl feed"

When I email podcast-support@google.com about this, they say the problem is the absence of a robots.txt file in my podcast folder. But the absence of robots.txt means robots ARE allowed to crawl the folder. When I pointed this out, they persisted in saying there is no robots.txt file there.

So I put an EMPTY robots.txt file there, which tells robots that they are all permitted to crawl the site.

When I told podcast-support@google.com I'd done this and still get the same error, they stopped talking with me.

iTunes has no problem with the feed. Google won't even look at it.

Any ideas on how to proceed from here?

I have no other plugins active on the site, and this is a fresh WordPress install.

Thanks.

Shawn Thorpe

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Re: Google "Not Allowed to Crawl Feed"
« Reply #1 on: February 14, 2018, 05:15:31 pm »
What's the URL to the feed you tried submitting to GPM?

Edit: I noticed you also posted this question over on the WordPress forum. In order to keep the line of communication from splintering, I'm closing further replies to this thread. Please post any relevant followups to this question on the WordPress forum thread:
https://wordpress.org/support/topic/google-says-not-allowed-to-crawl-feed/
« Last Edit: February 14, 2018, 05:20:54 pm by Shawn Thorpe »