GoogleBot being blocked

Hi John,
If you have uninstalled and removed everything related to the aiowps plugin and you are still seeing blocking I can’t see how the aiowps plugin is causing that for the behaviour you are currently observing.

Is there any caching performed on your site and if so did you completely clear all caches?

Did you check the “crawl errors” section in your google search console account?

Thank you for getting back to me. I am concerned there may be residual access rules (ie in .htaccess across the site) causing this. It is odd that the issue has arisen following installation of AIOWPS across the domains in question.

I’ll check the crawl errors, thanks.

I have just tried to look at the crawl errors but can only do this with a verified domain, of which that is the problem – they aren’t verified at the moment.

Any other ideas?

Thanks.

When you say, “removed everything related to the aiowps plugin” – what does this entail above and beyond un-installation or deactivation of the AIOWPS plugin?

Hi @johncove, in addition to deleting the plugin carry out the following steps.

– Log into phpMyAdmin and locate the database for the website you are working on. Look for any table entry with the following name aiowps and delete those tables.

– There should be 6 tables associated with this plugin: in addition to the options settings. There will also be other entries for transients and plugin version etc.

Let us know if the above helps you.

Kind regards

When you say, “removed everything related to the aiowps plugin” – what does this entail above and beyond un-installation or deactivation of the AIOWPS plugin?

When you deactivate the plugin via the admin “Plugins” menu it will automatically remove any htaccess rules.
Just in case, you should check your site’s .htaccess file and see if there are any rules related to this plugin and delete them and save the file and re-upload it via ftp.
These rules may still be there if you deactivated this plugin via other means (eg, ftp) instead of via the usual Plugins menu deactivation process.

Thank you for your advice but the problem is still present after following your instructions.

Does your plugin create any other files on FTP that would block GoogleBots?

Thanks.

Hi John,

Does your plugin create any other files on FTP that would block GoogleBots

No. Once you deactivate the plugin and ensure that your .htaccess file does not contain any of the aiowps code, none of the functionality in the aiowps plugin will work.

Problem solved – my hosting provider discovered the GoogleBot IP range was being blocked. Thanks for your support.

Thank you for letting us know. I am happy to hear that you have resolved your issue. I am marking this support thread as resolved.

Enjoy the plugin if you keep using it ??

Kind regards

Oh, it is a superb plugin. The only issue I have is where people are not having their user accounts approved without me having to do so for https://www.ataristsales.com – a bit of a pin. Can this approval be turned off?

Hi @johncove,

The only issue I have is where people are not having their user accounts approved without me having to do so

Do you have the following feature Manual approval of new registration enabled? If you do make sure you disable this feature. This is located under WP Security -> User Registration -> Manual Approval.

Let me know if the above helps you.

Kind regards

I am facing a similar problem here. When AIOWPS is enabled on the site, google bot is unable to fetch the site but when I disabled this plugin, google bot is able to fetch it. Please help. It’s urgent!

Hi @vishalarora91, please start a new support thread. This one is marked as resolved. You can add a reference to this support thread if you like.

Thank you