Websites, SEO and web management, London UK.

SEO

Robots File

anatomy of a robots file.
What is inside of a robots file...

How to write a robots file

Tips about robots file from Google -
Block or remove pages using a robots.txt file

robots.txt checker

From a handful online robots.txt checker tools tested no one was able for real life situations.

To test a robots.txt file go Google Webmasters Tools > Site configuration > Crawler access

robots.txt examples

Standard robots.txt file. Even if there is nothing to tell robots, the good practice is to have a robots file with some minimum robots disallow content

User-agent: *
Disallow:

Do not pay attention to category pages. On example.com/this/that/product?item=1700 pages in folders /this/ and /that/ will not be indexed.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /*/

if not *_* and is ? then noindex.

User-agent: *
Allow: /*_*
Disallow: /*?*

Robot, calm down and wait two seconds before you come again.

Crawl-delay: 2

robots.txt sitemaps

Sitemap: http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml.gz
Sitemap: http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml
Sitemap: http://www.example.com/sitemap-2.xml
Sitemap: http://www.example.com/search-engine-optimisation/sitemap.xml
2011

Examples of robots file, format of robots.txt file in search engine optimisation.