🤖 Robots.txt Guide
Control How Search Engines Crawl Your Site
📄 What is Robots.txt?
Text File
A plain text file at your domain root
Bot Instructions
Tells crawlers what to access or avoid
Location
yourdomain.com/robots.txt
Advisory
Suggestions, not enforced rules
📝 Robots.txt Syntax
# This is a comment User-agent: * Disallow: /admin/ Disallow: /private/ Allow: /public/ User-agent: Googlebot Disallow: /no-google/ Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml
User-agent:
Specifies which bot the rules apply to
Disallow:
Blocks access to specified paths
Allow:
Permits access to paths within disallowed directories
Sitemap:
Points to your XML sitemap location
💡 Common Examples
Allow All Bots Open
Allow all crawlers to access everything.
User-agent: * Disallow:
Block All Bots Blocked
Block all crawlers from entire site.
User-agent: * Disallow: /
Block Specific Directory Partial
Block crawlers from admin area.
User-agent: * Disallow: /admin/ Disallow: /login/
Block Specific Bot Targeted
Block only a specific crawler.
User-agent: BadBot Disallow: / User-agent: * Disallow:
⚠️ Common Mistakes
Blocking CSS/JS
Blocking CSS and JavaScript files prevents Google from rendering your page properly.
✓ Allow access to CSS and JS filesBlocking Entire Site
Using Disallow: / blocks your entire site from indexing.
✓ Only block specific private sectionsWrong File Location
Robots.txt must be at the root domain, not in subdirectories.
✓ Place at yourdomain.com/robots.txtUsing for Security
Robots.txt is not for hiding sensitive content - it's publicly visible.
✓ Use authentication for truly private content🤖 Common User Agents
Googlebot
Bing
Bingbot
Yahoo
Slurp
DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckBot
Google Images
Googlebot-Image
Google Video
Googlebot-Video
Google News
Googlebot-News
All Bots
*
🧪 How to Test Your Robots.txt
Visit yourdomain.com/robots.txt to verify file exists
Use Google Search Console's robots.txt Tester tool
Check URL Inspection tool for crawl issues
Monitor Coverage report for blocked pages