Need or not Robots Txt

Learn how to use robots.txt to control web crawlers & protect your website's content: an example & guide to creating your own robots.txt file.

Do I Need a Robots.txt?

Robots.txt is a file that is used to inform search engine robots (also known as crawlers) how to interact with the website. It is usually located at the root folder of your website and is used to specify which parts or content of the website should be crawled or indexed by the search engine robots.

The robots.txt file is not mandatory, but it is highly recommended to have one, as it can help you avoid getting your website penalized by search engines for cloaking or other violations. It is also useful for preventing search engine robots from crawling parts of your website that are not relevant to your SEO strategy.

To create a robots.txt file, you will need to open a plain text editor (such as Notepad++, Sublime Text, or TextEdit) and create a new file. You can then add the following code to the file:

User-agent: *
Disallow:

# Allow crawling of all files
User-agent: *
Disallow: 

# Allow only crawling of specific file types
User-agent: *
Disallow: /*.gif$
Disallow: /*.jpg$
Disallow: /*.png$

# Disallow crawling of all JavaScript files
User-agent: *
Disallow: /*.js$

The first line of the code (User-agent: *) defines the user agent (search engine robot) that the following rules apply to. The second line (Disallow:) defines the path or directory that should not be crawled (in this case, the root directory). You can then add additional lines to specify which specific file types should be allowed or disallowed from crawling.

Once you have added the appropriate code, you can save the file as robots.txt and upload it to the root directory of your website. You can then test the file to make sure it is working correctly using the Google Search Console or other similar tools.

In conclusion, a robots.txt file is not mandatory but is highly recommended in order to control how search engine robots interact with your website. You should create a robots.txt file and upload it to the root directory of your website in order to ensure that your website is not penalized by search engines.