Understanding the robots txt Format

The robots.txt file is a plain text file that provides instructions to search engine crawlers about which pages or sections of a website should not be crawled and indexed. The file is placed in the root directory of a website and follows a specific format.

The basic format of a robots.txt file includes two parts:

1. User-Agent: This line specifies which crawler the instructions in the file apply to. For example, if the line is User-Agent: Googlebot, the instructions will apply to the Googlebot crawler.

2. Disallow: This line specifies which pages or sections of the website should not be crawled. For example, if the line is Disallow: /secret-folder/, the Googlebot crawler will not crawl any pages in the /secret-folder/ directory.

Multiple User-Agent and Disallow lines can be included in a robots.txt file to provide instructions for multiple crawlers and to block access to multiple sections of the website.

Here is an example of a basic robots.txt file:

User-Agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /secret-folder/

User-Agent: Bingbot
Disallow: /private/

 

In this example, the first set of instructions applies to the Googlebot crawler and blocks it from crawling the /secret-folder/ directory. The second set of instructions applies to the Bingbot crawler and blocks it from crawling the /private/ directory.

It's important to note that the robots.txt file is a suggestion and not a legally enforceable directive. Search engines may choose to ignore the instructions in the file, so website owners should also use other methods to protect sensitive information.