In our daily lives, we use search engines countless times, and these search engines, in turn, need information. They want to know everything about our lives and web pages. That’s why search engines have machines or robots that crawl the web to classify and index as much information as possible into their databases. Robots.txt is one of these machines, widely used on the web to index web content. They also serve other purposes, such as site location in XML or blocking access to code files and directories.
What is a robots.txt file
When we create a website, we need Google to access the page to crawl the information. To do this, we need to create a text file on the domain so that the search engine can obtain all the information we want it to know about the website.
Additionally, the file is used to prevent bots or robots from adding data and information that we don’t want to share with the search engine. Robots.txt is a file located at the root of a site that indicates which parts the search engine crawlers can access and which parts they cannot.
How the file works
Although the operation of a robots.txt file may seem complicated, it’s actually quite simple. First, it’s important to understand that the instructions in the file are just guidelines and not definitive rules.
An important piece of advice is that if your website will have sensitive information that you don’t want to share, it’s best not to create it, so search engines cannot access it.
To implement limitations on indexing files, we use the “Disallow” command. This way, we can block the entire site, a directory, or an entire page.
How to create the robots.txt file
To create it, you need to provide access to the root of the domain and upload the text file (txt) with the name “robots.txt” to the top-level root directory of the server where the web you want to index is located. It’s important to use a text file, preferably plain text files.
Finally, you need to check if the robots.txt file is working. As we mentioned in a previous post, Google provides a free testing tool called Google Search Console. This tool will verify that the file is being read correctly and will also inform you of possible errors.
Do you think we can really restrict information from search engines on the web? Do you find it effective?
