Robots.txt | any SEO advantage to having one vs not having one?
-
Neither of my sites has a robots.txt file. I guess I have never been bothered by any particular bot enough to exclude it.
Is there any SEO advantage to having one anyways?
-
It's good practice, especially if you are operating a CMS that can create accessible URLs that cause duplicate content problems, create "junk" pages, etc. For example: http://www.asos.com/robots.txt
Google dislikes search results pages being indexed, so you can block those off, e.g. http://moz.com/robots.txt
You can disallow the archive.org bot if you don't want old versions of your site appearing in its search engine, and as others have said you can point to your xml sitemap.
It's not a bad resource to have at your disposal for site hygiene / maintenance reasons, but it's not an absolute necessity either.
-
There are actually a couple good reasons but in short, it's "best practice" so it won't hurt by adding it in. It wont take more than a couple minutes.
-
Just good practice. One SEO advantage would be to include a reference to your sitemap within the robots.txt file.
Aside from that, if you want all of your pages crawled and don't have a sitemap (although you should), no need for a robots.txt file.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Personalized Content Vs. Cloaking
Hi Moz Community, I have a question about personalization of content, can we serve personalized content without being penalized for serving different content to robots vs. users? If content starts in the same initial state for all users, including crawlers, is it safe to assume there should be no impact on SEO because personalization will not happen for anyone until there is some interaction? Thanks,
Technical SEO | | znotes0 -
"Url blocked by robots.txt." on my Video Sitemap
I'm getting a warning about "Url blocked by robots.txt." on my video sitemap - but just for youtube videos? Has anyone else encountered this issue, and how did you fix it if so?! Thanks, J
Technical SEO | | Critical_Mass0 -
Robots.txt file
How do i get Google to stop indexing my old pages and start indexing my new pages even months down the line? Do i need to install a Robots.txt file on each page?
Technical SEO | | gimes0 -
Question about construction of our sitemap URL in robots.txt file
Hi all, This is a Webmaster/SEO question. This is the sitemap URL currently in our robots.txt file: http://www.ccisolutions.com/sitemap.xml As you can see it leads to a page with two URLs on it. Is this a problem? Wouldn't it be better to list both of those XML files as separate line items in the robots.txt file? Thanks! Dana
Technical SEO | | danatanseo0 -
HTACCESS redirect vs. forwarding
I'm having trouble using htaccess redirect to redirect a subdomain to a new domain on a different server. Tech support at godaddy suggested I forward the subdomain. The subdomain has already been cached by google. Will forwarding in this way have the same affect (SEO wise) as an htaccess redirect??
Technical SEO | | triple90 -
How do I use only one URL
my site can be reach by both www.site.com and site.com. How do I make it only use www?
Technical SEO | | Weblion0 -
404 vs 301
My company is planning on discontinuing one of the product lines we currently offer. In terms of SEO, would it be better to implement a 301 redirect to a generic page page (such as the homepage or main product page), or to create a custom 404 page explaining that the product line with links to other pages (according to the most next viewed pages in Google Analytics). Thanks!
Technical SEO | | theLotter0 -
Robots.txt Syntax
Does the order of the robots.txt syntax matter in SEO? For example (are there potential problems with this format): User-agent: * Sitemap: Disallow: /form.htm Allow: / Disallow: /cgnet_directory
Technical SEO | | RodrigoStockebrand0