Robots.txt Generator

Robots.txt is a file that tells search engines which areas of your website they can index. What is its exact role? How to create it and how to use it for your SEO?

A file called robots.txt contains directives on how to crawl a website. This protocol, also known as the robots exclusion protocol, is used by websites to inform the bots which parts of their website need to be indexed. Additionally, you may designate which areas—those that have duplicate material or are still under construction—you don't want these crawlers to process. There is a good chance that bots like malware detectors and email harvesters will start looking at your site from the regions you don't want to be indexed because they don't comply to this standard and search for security flaws.

A complete Robots.txt file includes the directive "User-agent," as well as other directives such as "Allow," "Disallow," "Crawl-Delay," and so on. It may take a long time to write manually, and you can enter different lines of rules in one file. If you want to block a page, write "Disallow: the link you don't want the bots to visit," and the same is true for the allowing attribute. If you believe that is all there is to the robots.txt file, you are mistaken; one incorrect line can prevent your page from being indexed. So, leave the task to the professionals and let our Robots.txt generator handle the file for you.

What is the robots.txt file?

The robots.txt is a text file, its placement is at the root of your website. Its purpose is to prevent search engine robots from indexing certain areas of your website. The robots.txt file is one of the first files analyzed by Google spiders (robots).

What is it used for?

The robots.txt file gives instructions to the search engine robots that analyze your website, it is a robot exclusion protocol. With this file, you can prohibit crawling and indexing of:

• Your site to certain robots (also called “agents” or “spiders”),
• Some pages of your site to robots and / or some pages to some robots.

To fully understand the value of the robots.txt file, we can take the example of a site made up of a public area for communicating with customers and an intranet reserved for employees. In this case, the public area is accessible to robots and the private area is prohibited.

This file also tells engines the address of the website's sitemap file.

A meta tag named “robots” placed in the html code of a web page prohibits its indexing with the following syntax:

<meta name =”robots’ content =”noindex”>.

Where can I find the ROBOTS.TXT file?

The robots.txt file must be located at the root level of your website. To check its presence on your site, type in the address bar of your browser: https://yourdomain.com/robots.txt.

If the file is:

• Now it will be displayed and the robots will follow the instructions in the file.
• absent, a 404 error will be displayed and the robots will consider that no content is prohibited.

A website contains only one file for robots and its name must be exact and in lowercase (robots.txt).

How do I create a robots.txt file?

To create your robots.txt file, you must be able to access the root of your domain.

The robots TXT file can be created manually or generated by default by the majority of CMS like WordPress at the time of their installation. But it is also possible to create your file for robots with online tools.

To create it manually, you use a simple text editor such as Notepad while respecting both:

• syntax and instructions,
• a file name: robots.txt,
• a structure: one instruction per line and no empty lines.

To access the root folder of your website, you must have FTP access. If you do not have this access, you will not be able to create it and you will have to contact your host or your web agency.

The syntax and instructions of the robots.txt file

The robots.txt files use the following instructions or commands:

• User-agent: user-agents are the robots of search engines, for example Googlebot for Google or Bingbot for Bing.
• Disallow: disallow is the instruction that denies user-agents access to a url or a folder.
• Allow: allow is an instruction allowing access to a url placed in a forbidden folder.

Example robot.txt file

In the example above, the User-agent command is applied to all crawlers by inserting an asterisk (*). The hash mark (#) is used to display comments, comments are not taken into account by robots.

You will find on the site http://robots-txt.com/ the resources specific to certain search engines and certain CMS.

Robots.txt and SEO

In terms of SEO optimisation of your website, the robots.txt file allows:

• To prevent robots from indexing duplicate content,
• To provide the sitemap to the robots to provide indications on the URLs to index.
• To save the “crawl budget” of Google robots by excluding low quality pages from your website.

How to Test Your Robots.txt File?

To test your robots.txt file, all you need to do is create and authenticate your site on Google Search Console. Once your account has been created, you will need to click on Exploration in the menu and then on Robots.txt file test tool.

Testing the robots.txt file verifies that all important URLs can be indexed by Google. To conclude, if you want to control the indexing of your website, creating a robots.txt file is essential. If no file is present, all the urls found by the robots will be indexed and will be found in the results of the search engines.

How To Use Our Robot.txt Generator Tool

When search engines crawl a site, they first look for a robots.txt file at the domain root. If found, they read the file’s list of directives to see which directories and files, if any, are blocked from crawling. This file can be created with a robots.txt file generator. When you use a robots.txt generator Google and other search engines can then figure out which pages on your site should be excluded. In other words, the file created by a robots.txt generator is like the opposite of a sitemap, which indicates which pages to include.

The Purpose Of Directives In A Robots.txt File

If you are manually creating the file, you must be aware of the guidelines used in the file. You can even change the file after you've learned how they work.

• Crawl-delay This directive prevents crawlers from overloading the host; too many requests can overload the server, resulting in a poor user experience. Crawl-delay is treated differently by different search engine bots; Bing, Google, and Yandex all treat this directive differently. It is a wait between successive visits for Yandex, a time window in which the bot will only visit the site once for Bing, and you can control the visits of the bots for Google via the search console.
• Allowing directive is used to enable indexation of the following URL. You can add as many URLs as you want, but if it's a shopping site, your list may grow lengthy. Still, only use the robots file if you don't want certain pages on your site to be indexed.
• Disallowing A Robots file's primary purpose is to prevent crawlers from visiting the specified links, directories, and so on. These directories, on the other hand, are accessed by other bots that must check for malware because they do not comply with the standard.

Difference Between A Sitemap And A Robots.txt File

A sitemap is essential for all websites because it contains information that search engines can use. A sitemap tells bots how frequently you update your website and what kind of content it offers. Its main purpose is to notify search engines of all the pages on your site that need to be crawled, whereas the robots.txt file is for crawlers. It instructs crawlers on which pages to crawl and which to avoid. A sitemap is required to have your site indexed, whereas a robots.txt file is not (unless you have pages that do not need to be indexed).

How To Make Robot.txt By Using Google Robots File Generator?

To save time, people who don't know how to create a robots.txt file should follow the instructions below:

1. When you arrive at the New robots txt generator page, you will see a few options; not all of them are required, but you must choose wisely. The first row contains the default values for all robots as well as whether or not you want to keep a crawl-delay. If you don't want to change them, leave them alone.
2. The second row is about sitemaps; make sure you have one and include it in the robots.txt file.
3. Following that, you can select whether or not you want search engine bots to crawl your site, and the second block specifies whether or not you want images to be indexed. The third column is for the website's mobile version.
4. The final option is disallowing, which prevents crawlers from indexing certain areas of the page. Before entering the address of the directory or page, make sure to include the forward slash.

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