ROBOTS.TXT Primer

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There is often confusion as to the role and usage of the robots.txt file. I thought it would be a good idea to dispel some myths and highlight what robots.txt files are all about.There is often confusion as to the role and usage of the robots.txt file. I thought it would be a good idea to dispel some myths and highlight what robots.txt files are all about. Firstly, a robots.txt file is NOT to let search engine robots and other crawlers know which pages they are allowed to spider (enter), it is primarily to tell them what pages (and directories) they can NOT spider.
The majority of websites do not have a robots.txt, and do not suffer from not having one. The robots.txt file does not influence ranking in any way. Its goal is to disallow certain spiders from visiting and taking back with them pages you do not wish for it to do so.