The robots.txt file is used to guide search engine crawlers on how to interact with your website’s pages. The format is simple but essential for controlling which pages should be indexed or not. Here’s the ideal structure and best practices for creating a robots.txt file for optimal results:
Basic Format of robots.txt:
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User-agent: [user-agent name]
Disallow: [URL path to block]
Allow: [URL path to allow]
Sitemap: [sitemap URL]
Components:
User-agent: Specifies which search engine bots (crawlers) the directives apply to. For example, Googlebot for Google.
Example: User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: Tells the bot not to crawl a specific URL or directory.
Example: Disallow: /private/ (blocks the /private/ directory)
Allow: Lets the bot crawl a specific page or directory even if the parent directory is blocked by a Disallow rule.
Example: Allow: /public/page.html (allows the page even if its parent directory is blocked)
Sitemap: Specifies the location of your website’s sitemap, which helps bots discover all pages on your site.
Example: Sitemap:
https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml
Best Practices for Robots.txt:
Avoid Blocking Important Pages: Don't block pages that should be indexed (like your homepage or key content). Ensure you only block admin or duplicate content.
Use Wildcards for Flexibility: You can use * as a wildcard in the Disallow directive to block certain patterns, like /private/* to block all pages in a directory.
Test with Google’s Tools: Google Search Console has a robots.txt Tester to validate the correctness of your robots.txt file and ensure it’s not blocking important pages.
Keep It Simple: Ensure the file is easy to read and doesn’t contain unnecessary directives.
Example of an Optimized robots.txt File:
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# Blocking sensitive areas for all bots
User-agent: *
Disallow: /admin/
Disallow: /login/
# Allowing Googlebot to access CSS and JS files (important for rendering)
User-agent: Googlebot
Allow: /css/
Allow: /js/
# Sitemap for all search engines
Sitemap:
https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml
Important Notes:
robots.txt is public: Anyone can view the robots.txt file by appending /robots.txt to your website’s domain (e.g.,
www.example.com/robots.txt), so don't include any sensitive or private data there.
Doesn't Guarantee Indexing: If you allow access to certain pages in robots.txt, it doesn't necessarily mean they will be indexed. Content on those pages still needs to be valuable, relevant, and meet other SEO criteria for indexing.