Robots.txt Validator

Errors can prevent search engines from properly crawling your site, potentially blocking important pages from being indexed or allowing access to pages you want to keep private. Our validator identifies and explains how to fix these issues.

Block pages that don't add SEO value like admin areas, duplicate content, thank-you pages, and private sections. However, be careful not to block important pages that should be indexed.

Our tool includes a robots.txt tester that simulates how different search engines will interpret your directives. Test before implementing changes to avoid accidentally blocking important content.

Disallow blocks crawlers from accessing specified paths, while Allow explicitly permits access (useful for allowing subdirectories within disallowed paths). Allow takes precedence over Disallow for the same user-agent.

Yes, incorrect robots.txt can prevent important pages from being crawled and indexed, directly impacting rankings. It can also waste crawl budget on unimportant pages if not configured properly.

Major search engines follow similar standards, but some directives like crawl-delay are interpreted differently. Google ignores crawl-delay, while Bing respects it. Our tool shows compatibility across engines.

Yes, including your sitemap URL in robots.txt helps search engines discover it quickly. Use the 'Sitemap: [URL]' directive, and you can include multiple sitemaps if needed.

Crawl budget is the number of pages search engines crawl on your site. Use robots.txt to block low-value pages like admin areas, duplicate content, and parameter URLs, directing crawlers to your important content instead.

Yes, you can use asterisks (*) as wildcards to match any sequence of characters and dollar signs ($) to match the end of URLs. For example, 'Disallow: /*.pdf

Use 'Disallow: *.extension' to block file types. Examples: 'Disallow: *.pdf' blocks PDFs, 'Disallow: *.doc' blocks Word documents. Always test syntax to ensure it works as expected.

Each subdomain needs its own robots.txt file. For subdirectories (/en/, /fr/), one robots.txt at the root applies to all. Consider using separate rules for different language sections if needed.

No, Google recommends allowing CSS and JavaScript files so they can properly render and understand your pages. Blocking these files can hurt your SEO performance and mobile-friendliness scores.

Robots.txt controls crawling (whether search engines can access pages), while meta robots tags control indexing (whether pages appear in search results). Both serve different but complementary purposes.

Create a plain text file named 'robots.txt' and upload it to your domain's root directory (yoursite.com/robots.txt). Start with basic directives and test thoroughly before going live.