What is a robots.txt file and why is it important for SEO?

Technical SEO

A robots.txt file is a plain text file at the root of your domain that gives instructions to web crawlers.

Importance:

• Prevents crawling of duplicate/unimportant content, saving crawl budget.

• Avoids sensitive content crawling.

• Ensures assets needed for rendering aren’t blocked.

• In 2025, also used to manage AI bots (GPTBot, Perplexity).

How to use:

1. Place at root: yoursite.com/robots.txt.

2. Syntax: User-agent: *, Disallow: /example/.

3. Don’t block essential CSS/JS.

4. Test with GSC’s robots.txt tester.

Further reading: