Robots.txt is a text file that tells search engine crawlers which pages on your website to index and which ones to ignore. The file is placed in the root directory of your website, and it must be named “robots.txt“.
The syntax of robots.txt is very simple. Each line in the file starts with a command, followed by one or more URLs. For example, the following line tells crawlers to ignore all pages on the Example.com website:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
The “User-agent” field is where you specify which crawler you’re talking to. The asterisk (*) is a wildcard that applies to all crawlers. The “Disallow” field is where you specify which pages on your website you don’t want to be indexed. In the example above, the “/” symbol means “all pages”.
Why Is Robots.txt Important?
Robots.txt is important because it gives you control over which pages on your website get indexed by search engines. If you have pages on your website that you don’t want to be indexed, you can use it to tell crawlers to ignore them.
For example, let’s say you have a page on your website that contains sensitive information. You don’t want this page to show up in search results, so you can use it to tell crawlers not to index it.
How to Use Robots.txt?
Creating a robots.txt file is simple. Just create a text file and name it “robots.txt”. You can also refer to Google’s guide on how to create robots.txt file.
- If you want to disallow all crawlers from indexing your website, you can use the following code:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
This will tell all crawlers to ignore all pages on your website.
- If you want to allow all crawlers to index your website, you can use the following syntax:
User-agent: *
Disallow:
This will tell all crawlers to index all pages on your website.
- You can also use robots.txt to specify which pages you want to be indexed. For example, if you have a page that you want to be indexed, you can use the following code:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /page1.html
This will tell all crawlers to index the page1.html page on your website.
- You can also specify multiple pages in your robots.txt file. For example, if you have two pages that you want to be indexed, you can use the following code:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /page1.html, /page2.html
This will tell all crawlers to index the page1.html and page2.html pages on your website.
You can also specify which crawlers you want to allow or disallow. For example, if you only want to allow Google to index your website, you can use the following code:
Reasons To Use Robots.txt-
Robots.txt is important because it gives you control over which pages on your website get indexed by search engines. If you have pages on your website that you don’t want to be indexed, you can use it to tell crawlers to ignore them.
For example, let’s say you have a page on your website that contains sensitive information. For ensuring no errors in code, Google has robots testing tool that you can use.
How to Use Robots.txt?
Creating a robots.txt file is simple. Just create a text file and name it “robots.txt”.
- Add the following lines of code to the file:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
Save the file and upload it to the root directory of your website. That’s it! You’ve now created a robots.txt file.
- If you want to disallow all crawlers from indexing your website, you can use the following code:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
This will tell all crawlers to ignore all pages on your website.
- If you want to allow all crawlers to index your website, you can use the following robots.txt syntax:
User-agent: *
Disallow:
This will tell all crawlers to index all pages on your website.
- You can also use robots.txt to specify which pages you want to be indexed. For example, if you have a page that you want to be indexed, you can use the following code:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /page1.html
This will tell all crawlers to index the page1.html page on your website.
- You can also specify multiple pages in your robots.txt file. For example, if you have two pages that you want to be indexed, you can use the following code:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /page1.html, /page2.html
This will tell all crawlers to index the page1.html and page2.html pages on your website.
You can also specify which crawlers you want to allow or disallow.
Reasons To Use Robots.txt-
One of the most common reasons to use robots.txt is to keep your website’s internal search results pages from being indexed. For example, if someone searches for “example” on your website, they might see a results page that looks like this:
> example.com/search?q=example
If that results page is indexed, it will show up in Google’s search results, which is probably not what you want. By adding the following line to your robots.txt file, you can prevent Google from indexing your search results pages:
User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /search
Another common reason to use robots.txt is to prevent crawlers from indexing pages that are still under construction. For example, you might have a “coming soon” page that you don’t want to be indexed until it’s ready to be published. In that case, you can add the following line to your robots.txt file:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /coming-soon
Of course, there are many other reasons to use robots.txt. For example, you might want to prevent Google from indexing your website’s RSS feed, or you might want to prevent other websites from hotlinking to your images.
Why should you use robots.txt file? – 3 Major Reasons
1.To keep search engines from indexing pages that you don’t want to be found
2.To focus the search engine’s attention on the pages that you DO want to be found
3.To keep search engines from overloading your server with requests for pages that don’t exist
Why should you not use robots.txt file?
A robots txt file is not a way to prevent someone from stealing your content. If you want to prevent people from stealing your content, you should use a copyright notice or a digital rights management system.
Conclusion
Keep in mind that robots.txt is a suggestion, not a command. Just because you tell a crawler not to index a certain page doesn’t mean it will listen to you. In fact, some malicious web crawlers ignore robots.txt entirely. So don’t rely on robots.txt to protect your website’s content – use other methods, such as password protection, to keep sensitive information safe.
Learn More: On Page SEO Tips & Strategies