Robots.txt

A text file that webmasters create to instruct search engine robots or crawlers on how to interact with their website. It serves as a set of guidelines for search engines, informing them which pages to crawlCrawlThe process where search engine bots systematically browse through the web to find and analyze web pages.
More About Crawl and which ones to ignore.

The robots.txt file resides in the root directory of a website and can be accessed by adding “/robots.txt” to the end of the website’s URL. For example, www.example.com/robots.txt. This file uses a specific syntax to communicate with search engine spiders and provide instructions on how to access and index a website’s content.

The primary purpose of robots.txt is to prevent search engines from indexingIndexingOrganizing and categorizing vast amounts of information, such as web pages, documents, or even books, to allow quick and accurate retrieval.
More About Indexing certain pages or directories on a website that the webmaster does not want to be shown in search engine results. This can be helpful in scenarios where specific pages may contain sensitive information, duplicate content, or are not relevant to search engine users.

By disallowing the indexing of certain pages, web developers and site administrators can have better control over how their website appears in search engine rankings. This can help improve the overall visibility and performancePerformanceRefers to how fast a website or web application loads and responds to user interactions.
More About Performance of a website, as it allows search engines to focus on the most valuable and relevant content.

However, it’s important to note that robots.txt is not foolproof and should not be solely relied upon for ensuring the privacy or security of a website’s content. While most major search engines respect the instructions provided in the robots.txt file, there is no guarantee that all search engine crawlers will comply.

It’s also worth mentioning that robots.txt does not prevent access to a website’s content by other means such as direct links or referral trafficTrafficThe number of visitors or users who visit a particular website.
More About Traffic. It simply serves as a guideline for search engine crawlers, and it is still possible for users or other bots to access and view the content that has been disallowed in the robots.txt file.

When creating a robots.txt file, it’s important to follow the specific syntax and rules to ensure it is properly interpreted by search engines. There are several directives that can be used in the robots.txt file, including “User-agent,” “Disallow,” and “Allow,” among others.

The “User-agent” directive specifies which search engine crawler the following rules will apply to. For example, “User-agent: Googlebot” indicates that the subsequent rules are for Google’s crawler. The “Disallow” directive is used to specify pages or directories that should not be crawled or indexed, while the “Allow” directive can be used to override a previous disallow rule.