The robots.txt file is a critical and foundational element of your website. Its function is to provide instructions to search engine crawlers about which URLs they should not crawl on your website. From a technical SEO perspective, understanding what a robots.txt file is, how it operates, how to issue instructions to crawlers, and how to verify the validity and effectiveness of these directives is vital.
This article will guide you through the nuances of the robots.txt file, enabling you to comprehend its purpose and use it to enhance your SEO efforts, thereby securing more search results.
What is a robots.txt file?
The robots.txt file is a basic text file located in the root directory of your website. It provides directives to search engine crawlers about which pages they should crawl on your website. These directives are based on the Robots Exclusion Standard, which we will discuss further in this article. The instructions are given via User-Agent and Disallow commands.
The combination of User-Agent and Disallow informs search engine crawlers which URLs they are prohibited from crawling on your website. A robots.txt file containing only “User-Agent: * Disallow: /” is perfectly valid. In this case, the instruction given to crawlers is to avoid crawling the entire site.
Crawlers access your site and add the URLs to the crawl queue. This includes both newly discovered and previously known URLs. A crawler will first inspect the root directory of your website in search of the robots.txt file. If it’s absent, they will crawl your entire site. However, if a robots.txt file exists, they will crawl your website according to the directives you specify.
The primary reason for updating and maintaining a robots.txt file on your website is to prevent your site from becoming overwhelmed with superfluous crawler requests. It’s important to note that robots.txt is not a method to prevent pages from being indexed by Google.
A common misconception is that directives in your robots.txt file can be used to keep pages from appearing in Google search results. The truth is, Google can still index your pages if there are other signals, such as links from other websites.
Misconfiguring your robots.txt can have serious ramifications for your website. Accidentally directing crawlers not to access your pages can lead to negative consequences. This issue can be exacerbated for larger websites, potentially blocking crawlers from accessing significant portions of crucial pages.
Moreover, it’s not guaranteed that all search engine crawlers will adhere to the directives specified in your robots.txt file. While most legitimate crawlers will not crawl pages blocked by robots.txt, some malicious bots might ignore it. Therefore, it’s advisable not to rely on robots.txt to protect sensitive pages on your site.
This post was written by Kristian D’An. Kristian is the owner and SEO Specialist at Lux Digital Marketing, a Clearwater SEO company. Kristian has been optimizing websites successfully for over 7 years. He has helped his clients achieve the #1 position on Google in several different industries.
