Robots.txt is a simple text file that’s part of a website’s directory. It tells search engine crawlers which pages or sections of the site should not be scanned and indexed.
In the context of SEO:
- Purpose: Helps manage and guide search engine crawlers to the content you want to be indexed, improving the site’s SEO efficiency.
- Control: It allows you to prevent certain parts of your site from being indexed, such as duplicate content or private areas.
- Format: Consists of “User-agent” (the target web crawler) and “Disallow” (the URL you don’t want crawled) instructions.
Remember, while robots.txt can request crawlers not to index certain content, it’s not a fully secure method to hide web pages from search engines or users.
