A robots. txt file tells search engine crawlers which URLs the crawler can access on your site. This is used mainly to avoid overloading your site with requests; it is not a mechanism for keeping a web page out of Google.

txt file is legal, but it is not a legally binding document. It is a widely accepted and standardized part of the Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP), which web crawlers and search engines use to follow website owner instructions about which parts of a site they can or cannot crawl. However, adherence to the robots.

For example, you can validate your robots. txt by using our tool: enter up to 100 URLs and it will show you whether the file blocks crawlers from accessing specific URLs on your site. To quickly detect errors in the robots. txt file, you can also use Google Search Console.

The Robots Exclusion Standard was quickly embraced by the web community. Most major search engine crawlers adopted it, respecting the rules outlined in robots. txt files. While it's a voluntary protocol (bad bots can ignore it), the vast majority of web crawlers still abide by it.