What is Robots.txt?

[sreelavanya]

 !-!What is Robots.txt?

As the file name and extension suggest, a robots.txt file is a text file that gives instructions to search engine robots. A search engine robot, also sometimes called a bot, spider, or web crawler, is a program that systematically browses virtually all the websites on the Internet. The program gathers the most recent data and feeds this data back into to the search engine algorithm. The search engine algorithm is a mathematical formula that determines where and how to categorize various websites.

The robots.txt file is like your website's helpful tour guide for the search robot. When a robot crawls your site, the robots.txt file is the first place it goes. Inside the text file, instructions to the robot are stored that tell the program which areas of the site shouldn't be crawled at all.

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[bryanbell]

This can include sensitive or private information, duplicate content, or pages that you don't want indexed by search engines. By using a robots.txt file, you have control over what parts of your site are visible to search engines and which are not. It's important to note that robots.txt is a voluntary protocol, meaning that search engines are not obligated to follow the instructions in the file. However, most reputable search engines, like Google and Bing, respect the robots.txt file and will adhere to its directives.

The robots.txt file is located in the root directory of a website, and it must be named exactly "robots.txt". When a search engine robot accesses a website, it looks for this file first before crawling any pages.

The syntax of the robots.txt file consists of directives that inform robots which parts of the site to crawl or not crawl. The most common directives are "Disallow" and "Allow". "Disallow" tells the robot not to crawl specific sections or files of the site, while "Allow" permits access to certain parts that might otherwise be disallowed.

For example, if you wanted to disallow all robots from accessing a particular directory on your site, you would use the following directive:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /directory/

In this case, "*" is a wildcard that represents all robots, and "/directory/" is the path of the directory you want to block.

Additionally, you can also specify the crawl delay, which is the time in seconds that a robot should wait between accessing different pages on your site. This can be useful to prevent excessive server load. The directive for crawl delay looks like this:

Crawl-delay: 10

This sets a delay of 10 seconds between each page crawl.

It's important to note that the robots.txt file is a public document, accessible to anyone who knows its location. Therefore, sensitive information should never be included in this file. Also, keep in mind that while most search engines respect the robots.txt file, malicious bots or web scrapers may not adhere to its instructions.

Here are some additional details about the robots.txt file:

1. User-agent: The "User-agent" directive is used to specify the specific search engine robot or user agent that the following directives apply to. For example, you can use "User-agent: Googlebot" to give specific instructions to the Googlebot crawler. Using "User-agent: *" applies the following directives to all search engine robots.

2. Allow: The "Allow" directive is used to grant permission to search engine robots to crawl specific parts of your website that are otherwise disallowed. It overrides any "Disallow" rule that may be in place. For example, if you have a directory blocked with "Disallow: /directory/", you can use "Allow: /directory/page.html" to specifically allow access to a certain page within that directory.

3. Sitemap: You can also include the location of your XML sitemap in the robots.txt file using the "Sitemap" directive. This tells search engine robots where to find the sitemap file, which provides them with a list of all the pages on your website that you want to be indexed.

4. Comments: You can add comments to your robots.txt file by starting a line with a "#" symbol. These comments are ignored by search engine robots but can be helpful to document your directives and make the file more readable.

5. Multiple user agents and rules: You can include multiple user agents and rules in your robots.txt file. Each "User-agent" directive is followed by specific "Disallow" or "Allow" rules for that user agent. For example:

   User-agent: Googlebot
   Disallow: /private-folder/

   User-agent: Bingbot
   Disallow: /admin/

This example shows different disallowed directories for Googlebot and Bingbot.

[shawn88]

hello,
There is a hidden, relentless force that permeates the web and its billions of web pages and files, unbeknownst to the majority of us sentient beings. I'm talking about search engine crawlers and robots here. Every day hundreds of them go out and scour the web, whether it's Google trying to index the entire web, or a spam bot collecting any email address it could find for less than honorable intentions. As site owners, what little control we have over what robots are allowed to do when they visit our sites exist in a magical little file called "robots.txt."
"Robots.txt" is a regular text file that through its name, has special meaning to the majority of "honorable" robots on the web. By defining a few rules in this text file, you can instruct robots to not crawl and index certain files, directories within your site, or at all. For example, you may not want Google to crawl the /images directory of your site, as it's both meaningless to you and a waste of your site's bandwidth. "Robots.txt" lets you tell Google just that.

regards
shawn

[AndersonP]

Hello sreelavanya..,

Thanks for Sharing Nice information about Robots.txt. As I read somewhere - Robots.txt tells the robot that it should not visit any pages on the site. Web site owners use the /robots.txt file to give instructions about their site to web robots; this is called The Robots Exclusion Protocol.

[axix245]

Actually companies used that file "Robots.txt" for hide private page to search engine.due to this file search engine will unable to read that page...

[John23]

Basically, robot.txt is crawler of your website and they give your website data, update to search engine. If you don't want to index any page from search engine then you can disallow that page by robot.txt.

[puviyamilla]

 Robot.txt files tell your instructions to a search engine robot. it depends on what you what it to do. if you dont have the robot.txt file then when a robot visits your site and if it doesnt find the file, it will start to visit all the pages and contents of your site. these files are like walls which helps in preventing some files like java scripts, some images or any other files from indexing. it is also important to make a note that it is not a method that prevents search engines from crawling your site. so it is important to create a robot.txt file. if you need this file to be created you can get it from newbielink:http://www.xnynz.com/ [nonactive]

[tianamartin]

Basically in short this this a code to hide someones personal information. or the thing which they do not want to disclose it publicly.companies used that file "Robots.txt" to hide secret pages or information.due Robot.txt file file search engine can not access that page.

[kenrylesso]

This is a notepad file which helps to remove our web pages from Google index or if we want not to crawl web pages from Google spider then we place these links in robots.txt file.

[Smith Jones]

Hello friends,

Robots. TXT is a file through which you can guide search engines to crawl or not to crawl certain sections of your website.

Thanks for sharing.
Smith Jones