Robots.txt Validator

A Useful Technical SEO Tool to Validate Any Website's Allow and Disallow Directives

Features

Validate Robots.txt File

Monitor and inspect the indexation-controlling parameters

Check Robots Meta Tags

Locate the URLs with the disallow and allow directives

Identify Robots.txt Errors

Detect logical errors in the syntax of robots meta tags

Related Tools

ETTVI’s Robots.txt Validator

Discover the robots exclusions that prohibit the search engine from crawling or indexing your website in real-time

Make sure that all the unimportant web pages, media files, and resource files are blocked from crawling - validate the way the search engine crawlers (user agents) are instructed to crawl a website with ETTVI’s Robots.txt Validator. Enter the website URL; select the user agent, and check whether it allows or disallows the respective user agent’s activity such as crawling and indexing of a web page.

ETTVI’s Robots.txt Validator has made it easier to find out if all the crawlers are disallowed from crawling a particular page/file or is there any specific robot that can not crawl it.

Bring this useful SEO tool into service to monitor the behavior of web crawlers and regulate your website’s crawl budget - free of cost.

How to Use ETTVI’s Robots.txt Validator?

Follow these simple steps to test robots.txt file of a website with ETTVI’s advanced tool:

STEP 1 - Enter URL

Write the URL of a website as follows:

Note: Don’t forget to add “robots.txt” after the slash.

STEP 2 - Select User-Agent

Specify the crawler against which you would like to inspect the robots.txt file

You can choose any of the following user-agents:

Google Bot
Google Bot News
Adsense
AdsBot
BingBot
MSNBot-Media
Yahoo!
DuckDuckGo
Baidu
Yandex
Facebook
TwitterBot
Botify

STEP 3 - Validate Robots.txt File

When you click “Check”, ETTVI’s Free Robots.txt Validator runs to identify and inspect the robots meta directives of the given website. It highlights the URLs which the selected bot can or can not crawl.

User-agent: * indicates that all search engine crawlers are allowed/disallowed to crawl the website

Allow: indicates that a URL can be crawled by the respective search engine crawler(s)

Disallow: indicatDisallow:es that a URL can not be crawled by the respective search engine crawler(s)

Why Use ETTVI’s Robots.txt Validator?

User-friendly Interface

All it requires you to do is just enter your website URL and then run the tool. It quickly processes the robots.txt file of the given website to track all the blocked URLs and robots meta directives. Whether you are a beginner or an expert, you can easily locate the URLs with allow/disallow directives against the selected user-agent (crawler).

Efficient SEO Tool

ETTVI’s Robots.txt Validator is a must-have tool for SEO experts. It takes only a few seconds to inspect a website’s robot.txt file against all the user agents to track logical and syntax errors which can harm the website SEO. This is the easiest way to save your crawl budget and make sure that the search engine robots don’t crawl unnecessary pages.

Free Access

ETTVI’s Robots.txt Tester lets you audit any website’s robots.txt files to sure that your website is properly crawled and indexed without charging any subscription fee.

Unlimited Usage

For a more enhanced user experience, ETTVI’s Robots.txt Checker allows you to access it and use it regardless of any limit. People from all over the world can take advantage of this advanced SEO tool to validate any website’s robots exclusion standard however and whenever they want.

Understanding Robots.txt Files

Robots.txt File is the essence of Technical SEO, mainly used to control the behavior of the search engine crawlers. Therefore, read this ultimate guide to know how Robots.txt file works and how to create it in the well-optimized way.

What is Robots.txt File?

Robots.txt file allows or disallows the crawlers from accessing and crawling the web pages. Think of Robots.txt file as an instruction manual for the search engine crawlers. It provides a set of instructions to specify which parts of the website are accessible and which are not.

More clearly, the robots.txt file enables the webmasters to control the crawlers - what to access and how. You must know that a crawler never directly lands on the site structure rather it accesses the robots.txt file of the respetive website to know which URLs are allowed to be crawled and which URLs are disallowed.

Uses of Robots.txt File

A Robots.txt file helps the webmasters to keep the web pages, media files, and resource files out of the reach of all the search engine crawlers. In simple words, it is used for keeping URLs or images, videos, audios, scripts, and style files off of the SERPs.

The majority of the SEOs tend to leverage Robots.txt file as the means to block web pages from appearing in the search engine results. However, it shouldn’t be used for this purpose as there are other ways to do it such as the application of meta robots directives and password encryption.

Keep in mind that the Robots.txt file should only be used to prevent the crawlers from overloading a website with crawling requests. Moreover, if required then the Robots.txt file can be used to save the crawl budget by blocking the web pages which are either unimportant or underdevelopment.

Benefits of Using Robots.txt File

Robots.txt file can be both an ace in the hole and a danger for your website SEO. Except for the risky possibilty that you unintetionally disallow the search engine bots from crawling your entire website, Robots.txt file always comes in handy.

Using a Robots.txt file, the webmasters can:

Specify the location of sitemap
Forbid the crawling of duplicate content
Prevent certain URLs and files from appearing in SERPs
Set the crawl delay
Save the crawl budget

All of these practicies are considered best for the website SEO and only Robots.txt can help you to apply

Limitations on Using Robots.txt File

All the webmasters must know that in some cases, Robots Exclusion Standard probably fails to prevent the crawling of web pages. There are certain limitation on the use of Robots.txt File such as:

Not all search engine crawlers follows the robots.txt directives
Each crawler has its own way of understanding the robots.txt syntax
There’s a possibility that the Googlebot can crawl a disallowed URL

Certain SEO practicies can be done in order to make sure that the blocked URLs remains hidden from all of the search engine crawlers.

Creating Robots.txt File

Have a look at these sample formats to know how you can create and modify your Robots.txt file:

User-agent: * Disallow: / indicates that every search engine crawler is prohibited from crawling all of the web pages

User-agent: * Disallow: indicates that every search engine crawler is allowed to crawl the entire website

User-agent: Googlebot Disallow: / indicates that only the Google crawler is disallowed from crawling all of the pages on the website

User-agent: * Disallow: /subfolder/ indicates that no search engine crawler can access any web page of this specific subfolder or category

You can create and modify your Robots.txt file in the same way. Just be catious about the syntax and format the Robots.txt according to the prescribed rules.

Robots.txt Syntax

Robots.txt syntax refers to the language we use to format and structure the robots.txt files. Let us provide you with information about the basic terms which make up Robots.txt Syntax.

User-agent is the search engine crawler to which you provide crawl instructions including which URLs should be crawled and which shouldn’t be.

Disallow is a robots meta directive that instructs the user-agents not to crawl the respective URL

Allow is a robots meta directive that is only applicable to Googlebot. It instructs the Google crawler that it can access, crawl, and then index a web page or subfolder.

Crawl-delay determines the time period in seconds that a crawler should wait before crawling web content. For the record, Google crawler doesn’t follow this command. Anyhow, if required then you can set the crawl rate through Google Search Console.

Sitemap specifies the location of the given website’s XML sitemap(s). Only Google, Ask, Bing, and Yahoo acknowledge this command.

Special Characters including * , / , and $ makes it easier for the crawlers to understand the directives. As the name says, each one of these characters has a special meaning:

* means that all the crawlers are allowed/disallowed to crawl the respective website . / means that the allow/disallow directive is for all web pages

Robots.txt Quick Facts

➔ The Robots.txt file of a subdomain is separatly created
➔ The name of the Robots.txt file must be saved in small letter cases as “ robots.txt “ because it is case-sensitive.
➔ The Robots.txt file must be placed in the top-level directory of the website
➔ Not all crawlers (user-agents) support the robots.txt file
➔ The Google crawler can find the blocked URLs from linked websites
➔ The Robots.txt file of every website is publiclly accessible which means that anyone can access it

PRO Tip : In case of a dire need, use other URL blocking methods such as password encryption and robots meta tags rather than robots.txt file to prevent crawling of certain web pages.

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Frequently Ask Questions

Can I validate my robots.txt file against all user agents?

Yes. ETTVI’s Robots.txt File Checker enables you to validate your website’s robots.txt file against all user agents or web crawlers.

What is user-agent * in robots txt?

If you want to allow or disallow all user agents (crawlers) to crawl your web pages then you simply add * with the user agent in the robots.txt file. In simple words, * specifies that the given instruction is for all the user agents.

What does User Agent * Disallow mean?

User Agent: * / Disallow indicates that all the user agents or search engine crawlers are blocked from crawling the respective web page.

Should I disable robots.txt?

Robots.txt file determines or specifies the behavior of search engine crawlers. Therefore, if you disable the robots.txt file then the crawlers would be able to crawl all of your web pages. This will not only waste your crawl budget but results in the crawling of the pages you don’t want to be indexed. Anyhow, it doesn’t mean that you should use Robots.txt file to hide your web pages from the search engine crawlers. It is totally up to you if you use the robots.txt or disable it and add robots meta directives directly on the web pages which you don’t want to be crawled.

Can I use ETTVI’s Robots.txt Checker for free?

Yes. You can use ETTVI’s Robots.txt Validator Tool for free of cost.

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