WPO version 3.3.0 causing issue with robots.txt

Hello,

Thank you for reporting this, I have passed this on to the development team.

Hello,

Would it be possible for you to provide your Site Health Information please via pastebin.com? This can be found in the following location:

WP >> Tools >> Site Health >> Info >> Site Health Info >> Copy site info to clipboard

I encountered the same error. Have you guys resolved it? I’ve been searching all over the internet, and it seems this issue hasn’t been resolved. Other people have encountered it and it still hasn’t been resolved.

the plugin added this code on the robots.txt

User-agent: *

Disallow: /wp-content/uploads/wpo-plugins-tables-list.json

Here’s the error

Crawling and Indexing

robots.txt is not valid 1 error found

If your robots.txt file is malformed, crawlers may not be able to understand how you want your website to be crawled or indexed. Learn more about robots.txt.

Line #

Content

Error

7<!– WP Optimize page cache – https://getwpo.com – page NOT cached –>Unknown directive

Can you try adding?robots.txt?to Dashboard => Cache => Advanced Settings => URLs to exclude from caching textbox.

A client just alerted me to this issue and I can confirm that @vupdraft’s suggestion of adding robots.txt to the exclusions (and clearing the cache) resolves the issue.

Still seems like a bug though. The plugin should anticipate that sites have a dynamically generated robots.txt file and automatically exclude it.

I will pass this onto our development team

It appears that you are adding citation and backlink spam to all sites using WP Optimize for ill-conceived SEO ideas.

It will more than likely result in a manual penalty from Google, anyway.

No other plugin does this. It is unnecessary, and unethical.

<!– WP Optimize page cache –?https://getwpo.com?– page NOT cached –>

WP Optimize is a caching and minifying plugin. Adding unrequested *security features*, better handled by dedicated security plugins, is a poor excuse for adding this robots.txt backlink spam.