Robots.txt Generator
What is robots.txt?
The robots.txt file is a text file placed at the root of a website (e.g. https://example.com/robots.txt) that instructs web crawlers (robots) which pages they may or may not access. Search engine crawlers like Googlebot, Bingbot, and others check this file before crawling your site. You can allow all crawlers, block all crawlers, block specific crawlers by name, disallow specific paths, set a crawl delay to reduce server load, and specify your sitemap URL. Note that robots.txt is advisory — not a security mechanism. Malicious bots ignore it; only well-behaved crawlers respect it.
How to Use the Robots.txt Generator
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Add rules for specific bots (User-agent) or use * to match all bots.
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Set Disallow paths for pages you don't want crawled (e.g. /admin, /private).
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Set Allow paths to explicitly permit crawling of sub-paths under a disallowed parent.
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Optionally set a Crawl-delay in seconds to limit how quickly crawlers access your site.
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Add your sitemap URL at the bottom.
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Copy the generated robots.txt and upload it to your website root.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does blocking Googlebot in robots.txt prevent pages from appearing in search results? Blocking crawling prevents Googlebot from reading the page content, but Google can still index the URL if it's linked from other pages — it just can't see the content. To prevent indexing entirely, use a noindex meta tag or X-Robots-Tag header instead.
Is robots.txt a security measure? No. robots.txt is a convention that well-behaved crawlers follow voluntarily. It doesn't restrict access — anyone can fetch the URLs listed in it. Never rely on robots.txt to protect sensitive content. Use proper authentication and access controls instead.
What is the Crawl-delay directive? Crawl-delay tells crawlers to wait N seconds between requests to reduce server load. Google does not support this directive (it has its own crawl rate settings in Search Console). Other crawlers like Bingbot do respect it. For Google, configure crawl rate in Google Search Console.
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