Free Online Robots.txt Generator
Create a valid robots.txt file for your website in seconds. Configure crawl rules for search engine bots, set allow and disallow paths, and add your sitemap.
What Is a Robots.txt File?
A robots.txt file is a plain text file placed at the root of your website that tells search engine crawlers which pages or sections they can or cannot access. It follows the Robots Exclusion Protocol, a standard used by all major search engines including Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
How Robots.txt Affects SEO
While robots.txt does not directly impact rankings, it plays an important role in SEO by controlling crawl budget allocation. By disallowing unimportant pages such as admin panels, duplicate content, and staging areas, you ensure search engine bots spend their limited crawl budget on your most valuable content. Including your sitemap URL also helps crawlers discover pages efficiently.
Common Robots.txt Mistakes to Avoid
Never accidentally disallow your entire site with Disallow: / unless intentional. Avoid blocking CSS and JavaScript files that Google needs to render your pages. Remember that robots.txt is publicly accessible, so do not use it to hide sensitive URLs. Always test your robots.txt using Google Search Console before deploying.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where should I place my robots.txt file?
The robots.txt file must be placed at the root of your domain. For example, if your site is https://example.com, the file should be accessible at https://example.com/robots.txt. It will not work in subdirectories.
Does robots.txt block pages from appearing in Google?
Not exactly. Robots.txt prevents crawling, but a page can still appear in search results if other pages link to it. To truly prevent indexing, use a noindex meta robots tag on the page itself.
What does Crawl-delay do?
Crawl-delay tells bots to wait a specified number of seconds between requests. This can help reduce server load. Note that Googlebot does not officially support the Crawl-delay directive. Use Google Search Console to adjust crawl rate for Google.
Can I have different rules for different bots?
Yes. You can specify different rules for different user-agents. Each block starts with a User-agent line followed by the rules. Bots look for their specific block first and fall back to the wildcard (*) rules if no specific block exists.
Should I include my sitemap in robots.txt?
Yes, it is a best practice to include a Sitemap directive in your robots.txt file. This helps search engines discover your XML sitemap quickly. The format is: Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml