Robot.txt is a text file that tells search engines where they can and cannot go on your site. It specifies the place that web crawlers are allowed to search on a website. The robots.txt file somehow doesn’t specifically designate these. Instead, some places are off limits to searches.
You may easily prevent search engines from accessing entire domains, full directories, one or even more subdirectories, or specific files by using this simple text file. The robots.txt files describe which user agents may and may not crawl which areas of a website. These crawl commands specify whether to “disallow” or “allow” the actions of particular user agents.
What is it used for?
A robots.txt file is typically used to keep a file off Google and to regulate crawler traffic to your site, depending on the type of content.
If you suspect that Google’s crawler will overload your server, you can use a robots.txt file for web pages (PDF, HTML, or other non-media formats that Google can read) to manage crawling traffic or to prevent Google’s crawler from accessing unimportant or similar pages on your site.
The URL of your website can still show up in search results if it is disallowed by a robots.txt file, but the search result will not include a description. Video files, PDFs, and other non-HTML files won’t be accepted, nor will image files. Remove the robots.txt entry that is preventing the website from being viewed if you get this search result for your page and wish to repair it.
Managing crawl traffic and preventing pictures, videos, and audio files from showing up in Google search results may both be done with the use of a robots.txt file. This will not stop users or other websites from connecting to a user’s picture, video, or music clip
What role does robots.txt play in search engine optimization?
- By using the robots.txt file, you may avoid duplicate content issues, restrict access to specific areas of your website, and instruct search engines on how to scan your website more effectively.
- The ranking of your website may suffer if user agents are too severely restricted by disallowing instructions. Remember that websites that you have blocked with a robots.txt disallow command won’t be ranked by search engines.
- Search bots may ignore the disallow guidelines and crawl websites that shouldn’t be indexed as a result of even small mistakes.
- Such problems may also prevent search engine bots from accessing certain pages or prevent entire URLs from being crawled.
- You can make sure that search engines crawl all key areas of your website by using robots.txt properly.
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