A robot.txt file is an automated computer program or file that gives instructions to bots about regarding reading your website. Their main purpose is to prevent search engine web crawlers from indexing pages or content that’s not meant for public viewing or over-taxing your web server. If you are unsure how to include a robot.text file in your web pages, contact your local SEO Company on the Gold Coast to assist you or.
There are different types of bots, some are helpful and good, such as those designed to access sites for indexing in search results, these types of bots will follow the instructions you provide, while bad bots such as those looking for hidden or private files that are not meant to be viewed by the public can cause problems.
In the source files
When you land on a website unless you request to see the robot.text file by placing the full URL of the page you are requesting in your browser and adding /robots.text it will remain invisible to human visitors and is there as a guide that interacts with computer programs.
This guide allows for good bots to quickly find the important information on a web page that you want them to find. The main protocol is usually designed to have any visiting bots crawl your site map first to establish all the important information and easy pathways to navigate your site. Instructions are included to ensure the visiting bot avoid any content or resources on your site that you don’t want to be included.
This can be a very important consideration, as when a search engine crawler accesses the information it gains from crawling your site. This is because one of the major considerations for indexing it and categorizing the information with regard to its placing in search engine results is the quality and relevancy of the information.
Enforcement
Although a robots.txt file is designed to help bots that crawl your site they cannot compel them to follow your instructions and they will ignore them if they are contradictory or do not conform to the required parameters of the protocols of the bots or site engine web crawlers. For this reason it’s vital that they are formulated correctly. If you need help with these, then contact your local SEO company on the Gold Coast they will ensure your robot.text as well as any other matters relating to your website and contents are done properly at a very reasonable cost.
There are a lot of bots searching the internet, some of these are for the purposes of gathering information that is useful to companies or agencies for marketing purposes and is basically harmless, although can be annoying. Other types of bots are up to no good and can be used for finding opportunities for cyber criminals or searching out weaknesses in your defense systems or forbidden content.
Some bots are designed to gather news and others to crawl your site for search engines. These bots will try and visit your robots.text file as soon as they arrive on a website or page and are programmed where possible to follow the instructions found there. Other bots will just ignore the instructions in your robot.text file and look for weaknesses to exploit, so it’s advisable to take steps to block them on your site. Your local SEO Company on the Gold Coast can help you ensure your robot.text is done properly.