robottitiedosto

Robottitiedosto, often referred to as robots.txt, is a text file placed on a website's server to provide instructions to web crawlers, also known as bots or spiders. These crawlers are automated programs used by search engines like Google, Bing, and others to explore and index web pages. The primary purpose of a robots.txt file is to control which parts of a website crawlers are allowed or disallowed to access.

A robots.txt file is located in the root directory of a website. For example, it would be found at www.example.com/robots.txt. It uses a simple syntax to specify directives. The most common directives are "User-agent" and "Disallow". The "User-agent" directive specifies which crawler the following rules apply to, with a wildcard "*" meaning all crawlers. The "Disallow" directive specifies a path on the website that the crawler should not access. For instance, "User-agent: *" followed by "Disallow: /private" would prevent all crawlers from accessing any pages within the "private" directory.

Website owners use robots.txt for various reasons. It can be used to prevent search engines from indexing sensitive or duplicate content, such as login pages, internal search results, or staging environments. It can also help manage server load by preventing crawlers from repeatedly accessing resource-intensive pages. However, it's important to note that robots.txt is a voluntary protocol. Malicious bots or crawlers that do not respect the file's instructions can still access disallowed content. For true privacy and security, more robust measures like password protection or IP-based access control are necessary.