📄 Robots.txt is a text file that tells search robots (such as Googlebot) which pages on your site can be indexed and which cannot. It plays an important role in SEO, helping to improve the visibility of your content in the SERPs.
What is robots.txt for?
🔍 Indexing Control: Allows you to hide technical pages, duplicate content, or unnecessary material.
🚀 Improved SEO: Eliminating irrelevant content improves the visibility of the blog in search engines.
📉 Reduce the load on search robots: Only important pages are indexed, which saves robot resources.
What happens if you don't do anything with robots.txt?
⚠️ If you leave the default settings:
Pages with duplicate content, such as search results or pagination pages, are indexed.
SEO will suffer: An increase in "junk" pages in the index reduces the ranking of important pages.
Access to unnecessary data: Drafts or service pages may be indexed. This can affect your blog's reputation in search engines.
💡 How to close pages with duplicate content from indexing
What is duplicate content?
📄 Duplicate content is the same or similar text on multiple pages of a blog.
How is it created on Blogger?
Search pages: Blogger automatically creates pages /search?q=key+word.
Archives and tags: Category pages (/label/theme) replicate the content of the main page.
Pagination: Splitting publications into pages /page/2, /page/3.
How do search engines treat duplicate content?
🛑 Negative perception: Duplicate content degrades the uniqueness of the site.
📉 Reduced SEO: Having a large number of duplicates hinders the promotion of important content.
🚫 Risk of sanctions: Google may limit the visibility of a blog in the search results.
How do I close duplicate pages from indexing?
Add the appropriate rules to the robots.txt file:
User-agent: * Disallow: /search Disallow: /label Disallow: /page Allow: / Sitemap: https://yourblog.blogspot.com/sitemap.xml
💡 Do I need to specify rules for individual search engine robots?
What are the types of web crawlers?
Googlebot: Google's primary crawler responsible for indexing and ranking.
Bingbot: Microsoft's robot for indexing pages in Bing.
YandexBot: Yandex robot for sites in the Russian-speaking segment.
DuckDuckBot: DuckDuckGo search engine robot.
AhrefsBot: A web crawler for analyzing websites and collecting data on links.
When do I need to specify rules for individual robots?
🛡️ Access restriction: For example, if you want to block AhrefsBot or other crawlers that consume server resources.
⚙️ Special settings: Specify individual rules for each robot if they have different behaviors.
🔒 Privacy Protection: Exclude robot-specific service pages.
Example of setting up for individual robots
User-agent: Googlebot Disallow: /private User-agent: Bingbot Disallow: /temporary User-agent: * Disallow: /search Disallow: /label Allow: / Sitemap: https://yourblog.blogspot.com/sitemap.xml
Googlebot: Blocks access to private pages.
Bingbot: Excludes temporary pages.
*User-agent: general rules for all robots.
How to check robots.txt?
Google Search Console: Check the availability of the file and test the rules.
Manual: Go to the https://yourblog.blogspot.com/robots.txt to make sure the file is displayed correctly.
🌟 Total
A robots.txt file is an essential tool for setting up SEO and protecting your blog. Specifying rules for all or individual robots helps to eliminate duplicate content, optimize the visibility of important pages, and reduce the risk of penalties from search engines. 🚀