Robots.txt Generator

Default - All Robots are:	Allowed Refused
Crawl-Delay:	Default - No Delay 5 Seconds 10 Seconds 20 Seconds 60 seconds 120 Seconds
Sitemap: (leave blank if you don't have)
Search Robots:	Google	Same as Default Allowed Refused
	Google Image	Same as Default Allowed Refused
	Google Mobile	Same as Default Allowed Refused
	MSN Search	Same as Default Allowed Refused
	Yahoo	Same as Default Allowed Refused
	Yahoo MM	Same as Default Allowed Refused
	Yahoo Blogs	Same as Default Allowed Refused
	Ask/Teoma	Same as Default Allowed Refused
	GigaBlast	Same as Default Allowed Refused
	DMOZ Checker	Same as Default Allowed Refused
	Nutch	Same as Default Allowed Refused
	Alexa/Wayback	Same as Default Allowed Refused
	Baidu	Same as Default Allowed Refused
	Naver	Same as Default Allowed Refused
	MSN PicSearch	Same as Default Allowed Refused
Restricted Directories:	The path is relative to root and must contain a trailing slash "/"

Now, Create 'robots.txt' file at your root directory. Copy above text and paste into the text file.

About Robots.txt Generator

Robots.txt is one of the simplest files on a website but is also the easiest one to make mistakes on. One mistake can lead to your SEO score nosediving and can prevent search engines from finding your site and the vital content present on your site.

If you are not a technical person, you might not know what a robots.txt file is. Well, that's where we come in. Read on to learn about the ins and outs of a robot.txt generator and how it impacts your SEO.

What is a Robots.txt File?

A robots.txt file is a set of rules that govern search engine bots. It is a file containing a list of areas of a website where a search engine bot is forbidden from crawling. It lists URLs that the webmaster doesn't want sites like Google or Bing to index and prevents them from visiting these sites.

When a bot comes across a site on the internet, it checks the robot.txt file to know which areas it can explore and which it should ignore.

However, you must remember that a robots.txt file is like a "Code of Conduct" of sorts in that there is no way to enforce these rules. Although search engines like Google and Bing follow these rules, a few completely ignore them.

How Do You Find Your Robots.txt File?

If you don't know if you have a robots.txt, here are a few steps you can follow to find out:

• Type your root domain
• Then add /robots.txt at the end of the URL. For example, the robots.txt file for VISER X is located at https://www.viserx.com/robots.txt

If no .txt page appears, this means you don't have a do not have a robots.txt page that is running live. If you do not have a robots.txt file, you need to consider whether you need it. If you do, then use the guide below.

What Does a Robots.txt File Look Like?

Here is a straightforward format of what a robots.txt file looks like:

Sitemap: [URL location of sitemap]

User-agent: [bot name]
[directive 1]
[directive 2]
[directive 3]
[directive ….]

User-agent: [bot name 2]
[directive 1]
[directive 2]
[directive ….]

If this is your first time seeing one of these files, it may not seem easy to comprehend, but the syntax is quite simple. You set instructions for the bot by first mentioning them by name and then following that with their instructions.

How Does a Robots.txt File Work?

A robots.txt file is simply a text file with no HTML markup code. It is typically hosted on the web server, just like any other file. You can view your robots.txt file by adding /robots.txt to your homepage URL.

This file is not linked to any other part of your site, which means visitors will not come across it, but most crawler bots will visit this page before exploring the rest of the page.

While a robots.txt file is essentially a set of rules for the bots to follow, it doesn't have the power to enforce them.

A 'good' bot will visit the file first and then follow the instructions, whereas a 'bad' bot will either ignore the robots.txt file or, in more malicious cases, process the file to find webpages that have been forbidden. Malware crawlers or email address scrapers usually do this.

Note that a web crawler bot will follow the most specific instructions. If the bot encounters instructions counter to a previous one, it will follow the most precise or granular one.

Remember that each subdomain on your website also requires a robot.txt file.

Why is It Important to Use a Robots.txt File?

Since robot.txt has somewhat of control over bots accessing your site, there are a few reasons why this is beneficial for you.

• To prevent duplicate content from appearing in search results
• To prevent bots from accessing entire sections of a website
• To avoid the crawling of an internal search engine
• To prevent search engines from indexing specific images that are on your site
• Robot.txt files can specify the location of the sitemap
• You can add a scan delay to prevent your servers from overloading when crawlers simultaneously access multiple bits of content on your site.

What is Robots.txt in SEO?

Regarding SEO, a robots.txt file can be instrumental in your site's visibility on search engines. Below is a list of ways robot.txt is vital for SEO.

• Robot.txt files help optimize the crawl budget of search engines spider by sending them to relevant places and thus making better use of their time.
• The robot.txt file can force bots to certain index pages on the site by pointing them out directly.
• The robots.txt file can keep crawlers from accessing potentially sensitive pages, such as the payment details page.
• Robots.txt can also prevent specific files such as JPEGs and PDFs from appearing in search results.

What is the Syntax of Robots.txt?

Robot.txt is the language used in a robots.txt file. There are five common terms that you will come across in the file:

• User-agent: The specific web crawler to whom you are instructing. It can be Googlebot, Bingbot, Baiduspider, etc.
• Disallow: This is the command to notify a user-agent that they are forbidden from accessing a certain URL. You are only allowed one disallow line per URL.
• Allow: This instruction is only applicable in the case of Googlebot. It tells Googlebot that it can access a specific page or subfolder, even though the parent page or subfolder may be blocked.
• Crawl-Delay: This determines how many seconds a crawler should wait before loading and crawling content from the page.
• Sitemap: This is used to call out the location of any XML sitemaps related to the URL. This command only works with Google, Ask, Bing and Yahoo.

What are the Best Practices for Using Robots.txt?

To maximize the effectiveness of your SEO strategy, you must ensure that your robots.txt file doesn't contradict your plan.

Here is a list of best practices that will help your SEO rating.

• Ensure that you have not disallowed certain website sections you want to be crawled by the search engine bots.
• Bots will not follow links on pages that have been blocked. These pages will not be crawled or indexed unless other search engines have linked them. Link equity can be passed from the blocked page to the link destination. Using different mechanisms to block if you want the equity to be given is best.
• Don't use robots.txt to prevent sensitive data (like payment information) appearing in search engine results. This is because other pages may directly link to the page, leading to these pages being indexed. If you want to block your page from search results, you should use a different methodology, such as password protection.
• Since some search engines have multiple crawlers, such as Google who has Googlebot and Googlebot-Image, you can fine-tune the crawling of your content by selecting which bot access your page and which does not
• Search engines cache the contents in a robots.txt file and update the cache at least once a day. If you change the file and want to update it quicker, you can submit your robots.txt URL to Google.

How Do You Create a Robots.txt File?

If you do not have a live robots.txt file running on your server, you can add one following the steps below.

• Open your choice of word processor and start a new document
• Add the instructions you would like to include to the document
• Save the file under robot.txt and make sure to export the file in .txt format
• Test your file
• Upload your robots.txt file to your server using FTP or whatever method is required

Alternatively, you can use a robots.txt generator to avoid errors in your file. You can use VISER X's robot.txt generator to create one for yourself within seconds.

How Do You Test a Robots.txt File?

Before you go live with your new robots.txt file, you will need to test it to ensure validity. This will help prevent issues with erroneous instructions that may have been added.

The robots.txt testing tool is only available on a previous version of Google Search Console. If your website is not integrated with Google Search Console, you must do that before continuing.

Visit Google's support page and click the "open robots.txt tester" button. Upload the file, and you will be taken to a page.

To test your new robots.txt file, delete everything in the box, replace it with your new instructions, and click "Test." If the response is "allowed," your code is valid, and you can revise your actual file with code.

Examples of a Robot.txt File

Below are a few examples of robot.txt files and their most common instructions. These are here to illustrate what the code looks like, but if they happen to be helpful to you, you are welcome to copy-paste it into the text document, save it as robots.txt and upload it to the appropriate directory.

Example 1: All-access for All Bots

User-agent: *
Disallow:

Remember that if you fail to declare a URL after instruction, it becomes redundant, which means the search engine will ignore it. This is why the above disallow instruction has no effect.

Example 2: No Access for All Bots

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Example 3: Block a Subdirectory for All Bots

User-agent: *
Disallow: /folder/
Allow: /folder/page.html

Example 4: Block One File for All Bots

User-agent: *
Disallow: /this-is-a-file.pdf

Example 5: Block one filetype for all bots

User-agent: *
Disallow: /*.pdf$

Example 6: Block all parameterized URLs for Googlebot only

User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /*?

Common Problems with Robots.txt Files and Their Solutions

To see if you have a problem with your robots.txt file, open Google Search Console and check the Crawl Stats report to see if there's a dip in the number of pages crawled daily. If there is, then this indicates that there could be a problem with your robots.txt file.

The biggest problem in robots.txt files is accidentally disallowing pages you want to get crawled. You can find this information in your GSC Crawl Errors report.

Check for pages that have error code 500. This is the code for pages blocked by your robots.txt file. To fix this issue, check if the URLs that return this code are blocked in your robots.txt file.

Some more common issues with robots.txt files are:

• Accidentally adding forward slashes at the end of file names. Even though the traditional URL might include a trailing slash, adding this at the end of a line will cause a bot to interpret it as a directory instead of a file. This will lead to blocking all pages of the folder. You should double-check your disallow lines for trailing slashes that should not be there.
• Blocking resources like CSS and JavaScript codes using robots.txt will impact the way search engines see your page. Google recently said that disallowing CSS and Java will count against your SEO. Google uses CSS and JavaScript to gauge your site, and blocking these may hinder your ranking on Google's search results.
• Using more than one User-agent per line will lead to search engines ignoring more than one user in the line, leading to improperly crawling your website.
• Improper capitalization of a directory may confuse robots as values inside instructions are case-sensitive. Your instruction URL must perfectly match your traditional URL, or the page will get crawled.
• Using a noindex directive will not be effective as neither Google nor Bing supports its use in robots.txt files.
• Contradicting your sitemap in your robots.txt file may occur if you create your sitemap and robots.txt using separate tools. This is not a good thing to do in front of search engines. But fortunately, it is easy to find and fix. Use GSC to crawl your site, which will provide you with a list of errors you can check against your robots.txt file.
• Disallowing pages in your robots.txt file that use the noindex meta tag will block the page from crawlers but can still cause your page to appear in search results if it's linked to another page.

Conclusion

A robot.txt file is a useful tool in your web arsenal. It can help avoid duplicate content in search results and hide pages currently undergoing maintenance or even pages you wish were unavailable to the public.

However, you must note that not all search engines will adhere to the instructions on a robots.txt file. Therefore, you should not rely on it to secure pages that may contain confidential or sensitive information, such as your payment information page or your employee information page, etc.

Hopefully, this article successfully gave you an idea of what a robots.txt is, how it works and why you should use it. You are welcome to use our free robot.txt generator tool for your purposes.