Blocking Complicated URLs with Robots.txt
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If you have a large web site, you might have some content that you do not want the search engines to index -- perhaps for duplicate content reasons or you simply don't want someone casually stumbling across it. You know you can use robots.txt, but what if you need to block thousands of pages or block only certain files within a folder? This article will explain some of the more advanced uses of robots.txt. You will even learn how to block dynamic pages!
An Overview of the Robots.txt File
Robots.txt is one of the most important files to place in a web server. Basically, below are the main uses of robots.txt file:
It will tell the bots which URLs cannot be crawled.
When the bots receive these restrictions, they will focus on crawling those parts of your web site which are not restricted.
The main uses are very simple, but actually using robots.txt could be complex and making a mistake with it can banish your site in the search engine index. The objective of this article is to provide advanced techniques in robots.txt for blocking complicated URLs.
To use a robots.txt file you need server access or FTP access. This tutorial assumes you satisfy the following requirements:
You have a web site and you have full control of it with FTP access for the root directory.
You have registered your web site with Google Webmaster tools.
Any webmaster can control which parts of their website can be crawled; the problem is the syntax of the robots.txt file. It is sometimes difficult to create the robots.txt syntax correctly without proper training and tools. After you finish reading this tutorial, you should have full knowledge of how to handle robots.txt.
The basic syntax of robots.txt is:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /file or folder to be blocked
Allow: /file or folder to be allowed
This file should be uploaded to the root directory of your website to properly function and avoid conflicts. The first line, User-agent: * , means that the syntax will be applied to all bots. To avoid serious problems, it is highly recommended that you use "*" in the user-agent as blocking several bots (instead of all of them at once) increases the risk of mistakes and makes the search engines doubtful of your site content.
This discussion focuses more on using the robots.txt file for Google. Principles learned from this article can still be applied to other search engines, such as Yahoo; however the practical examples to be illustrated will be tested in Google.
Next: Benefits of Proper Robots.txt Usage >>
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