A robots.txt file tells search engine crawlers which pages or sections of your site they can or cannot access. Our free robots.txt generator helps you create a properly formatted robot exclusion protocol file that improves your site's SEO by controlling how search engines index your content.

Simply configure which directories to allow or disallow for different user-agents, add your sitemap URL, and set crawl delays. Generate a ready-to-use robots.txt file in seconds and improve your website's search engine visibility.

The robots.txt file is a simple text file placed in your website's root directory that communicates with web crawlers about which areas of your site should or shouldn't be accessed. Search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo check for this file before crawling your site.

While robots.txt doesn't guarantee that pages won't be indexed (malicious bots may ignore it), it's an essential tool for SEO best practices. Use it to prevent duplicate content issues, protect sensitive directories, and manage crawl budget on large sites.

Always place robots.txt in your root directory (https://example.com/robots.txt), not in subdirectories. Search engines only look for it at the root level of your domain.

Use disallow rules carefully – blocking important pages can prevent them from appearing in search results. Never block CSS or JavaScript files that Google needs to render your pages properly, as this can hurt your SEO.

Include your sitemap URL in robots.txt to help search engines discover all your pages more efficiently. Use absolute URLs for sitemaps, and you can list multiple sitemaps if needed.

Test your robots.txt file using Google Search Console's robots.txt tester before deploying. This helps catch syntax errors and verify that you're not accidentally blocking important content from being crawled.

User-agent directives specify which crawler the rules apply to. Use 'User-agent: *' for all crawlers, or target specific bots like 'User-agent: Googlebot' for Google, 'User-agent: Bingbot' for Bing, or 'User-agent: AhrefsBot' to block SEO tools.

You can create different rule sets for different crawlers. For example, you might allow Googlebot to access everything while blocking aggressive crawlers that consume too much bandwidth. Each user-agent block should have its own set of allow/disallow rules.