This tool parses and displays the rules in your robots.txt file, organized into a table. It also displays any sitemaps from the robots.txt file, followed by the raw text.
How to Test the Robots.txt File
Robots.txt is a file that allows you to control how search engine crawlers and other web robots interact with your website. The primary purpose of this file is to help you maintain your website’s SEO, but it can also be used to prevent unwanted actions by bots such as indexing of certain files or folders on your site and blocking search engines from crawling them altogether.
In this post we’ll explain what the robots.txt file is, how to test yours, and why it might not be doing everything you think it should be doing in terms of protecting your content from discovery by crawlers — including Googlebot!
What is the robots.txt file?
The robots.txt file is a text file used to tell search engines which pages on your site are not accessible to them. It helps search engines understand how to crawl your site and can also be used to block some search engines from crawling your site.
How do I check my robots.txt file?
You can check your robot.txt file by going to your website and typing in the URL of the file into the search bar. If you’re using a robots.txt checker, it will tell you whether or not your file is valid and if there are any errors or issues with it.
How to a create a robots.txt file
The first step is to create a text file and save it as robots.txt. Upload this file to your website’s root directory, making sure that it’s an ASCII text file and not another format. The easiest way to do this is through FTP or cPanel.
Once you have created and uploaded your new robots.txt file, we recommend testing it by adding one line at a time until you are satisfied with the results.
Robots.txt rules
The first thing to know about robots.txt files is that they are made up of rules. These rules tell search engine robots what they can and cannot access on your website, as well as how to behave when accessing it.
There are three main types of robots.txt rules:
Disallow – This tells Googlebot not to crawl any part of your site at all (including images), which means that the content won’t show up in search results.
Allow – This tells Googlebot that everything except what’s specified in an “exclusion” rule should be crawled by its web crawler tool called Googlebot-Mobile (or just “Googlebot”). So if you have an exclude rule for “/image/*”, then all other pages will be crawled except for those ending with “/image/*”.
- Sitemap – The location of a sitemap for this website. The sitemap URL must be a fully-qualified URL; Google doesn’t assume or check http/https/www.non-www alternates. Sitemaps are a good way to indicate which content Google should crawl, as opposed to which content it can or cannot crawl.
Do you need a robots.txt file?
A robots.txt file is a text document that you can create and upload to your web server, which tells search engines what they should and shouldn’t crawl on your site. It’s not required, but it’s a good idea to have one if you want more control over how your site is crawled and indexed by search engines like Googlebot and Bingbot.
The main reason why people use this file is because it allows them to block certain pages from being indexed by bots (robots). For example: if there are some pages on your site that aren’t ready yet for public viewing, then those pages should be blocked so that only humans can see them until they’re ready for prime time!
How to use our free robots.txt checker
The easiest way to find out if your site can be indexed by search engines is to use our free robots.txt checker. All you need to do is enter your domain name, and click Submit. The checker will automatically scan your site and report any errors it finds in the robots.txt file, such as missing URLs or incorrect permission settings for directories or files on your server.
Conclusion
We hope this article has helped you understand what a robots.txt file is and how it can help your SEO efforts. If you have any questions about robots.txt files or our free checker, please don’t hesitate to contact us!
