Robots.txt Generator Tool
Create a perfect robots.txt file to control search engine crawlers and optimize your website’s indexing
Crawler Access Rules
Advanced Configuration
What is a robots.txt File?
A robots.txt file is a text file that tells search engine crawlers which pages or files they can or cannot request from your website. This important SEO file sits in your root directory and helps manage crawler traffic to your site, preventing indexing of private or duplicate content while ensuring important pages get crawled efficiently.
Crawler Control
Prevent search engines from indexing sensitive areas like admin panels, login pages, or staging environments.
Crawl Budget Optimization
Direct crawlers to your most important content and avoid wasting crawl budget on low-value pages.
SEO Performance
Improve your site’s indexing efficiency and prevent duplicate content issues.
How Our Robots.txt Generator Works
Our tool creates a standards-compliant robots.txt file following these steps:
- Basic Configuration: Set your website URL and basic crawl permissions.
- Common Rules: Select from pre-configured rules for common CMS platforms and website structures.
- Advanced Options: Add custom rules, crawl delays, and sitemap references.
- Validation: Our system checks your configuration for errors and best practices.
- Generation: Create a perfect robots.txt file ready for your root directory.
Key Benefits of a Proper robots.txt File
Protect Sensitive Areas
Keep private content out of search results by blocking crawlers from admin areas, user profiles, or other sensitive directories.
Optimize Crawl Budget
Help search engines focus on your most important pages by preventing them from wasting time on low-value content.
Prevent Duplicate Content
Avoid SEO penalties by blocking crawlers from accessing duplicate or alternate versions of your content.
Frequently Asked Questions
No, robots.txt alone doesn’t prevent pages from being indexed. While it tells crawlers not to access certain pages, those pages might still appear in search results if they have backlinks. For complete blocking, you should:
- Use
noindex
meta tags or headers for pages you don’t want indexed - Password-protect sensitive content
- Use both robots.txt and noindex for maximum protection
Remember that robots.txt is more about controlling crawling than indexing.
Yes, including your sitemap in robots.txt is considered a best practice because:
- It helps search engines discover your sitemap more easily
- Some crawlers specifically look for sitemaps in robots.txt
- It serves as an additional reference point beyond Search Console submissions
The syntax is simple: just add Sitemap: https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml
at the end of your file. Our generator automatically includes this when you provide your sitemap URL.
These directives serve different purposes:
Directive | Location | Function |
---|---|---|
Disallow |
robots.txt | Tells crawlers not to request these pages (but they might still be indexed) |
Noindex |
Meta tag or HTTP header | Tells search engines not to show the page in results (but they must crawl it first) |
For maximum control, you might need to use both approaches depending on your needs.
You should review and potentially update your robots.txt file whenever:
- You add new sections to your website that shouldn’t be crawled
- You restructure your URL paths
- You notice crawl budget issues in Search Console
- You launch a new version of your site
- You add or change your sitemap location
Major search engines typically re-crawl robots.txt every few days, so changes take effect relatively quickly.