robotstxttiedostojen

A robots.txt file is a text file located at the root of a website that provides instructions to web crawlers, also known as bots or spiders. These files are part of the Robots Exclusion Protocol, a standard that helps website owners manage how search engine bots access and index their content. The primary purpose of a robots.txt file is to inform bots which parts of a website they should not crawl or index.

The file contains rules that specify which user-agents (e.g., Googlebot, Bingbot) are allowed or disallowed to access certain directories or files. A common directive is "Disallow," which prevents bots from accessing specified paths. For example, "Disallow: /private/" would instruct bots not to crawl anything within the "private" directory. Conversely, "Allow" directives can be used to grant access to specific files or subdirectories even if their parent directory is disallowed.

While not a security measure, robots.txt is a way for website administrators to guide search engine visibility and reduce server load by preventing unnecessary crawling of resource-intensive or private areas. It's important to note that malicious bots may ignore these instructions. Search engines respect robots.txt as a guideline, and non-compliance can lead to pages being indexed unintentionally.