Robots.txt gives crawler instructions
A robots.txt file tells crawlers which parts of a site they may access. It is often used to point crawlers to the sitemap and block low-value technical paths.
It is not a security tool. Private pages should be protected by authentication, not only blocked in robots.txt.
Include your sitemap
Adding a sitemap line helps crawlers find the XML sitemap. This is especially useful for sites with many tool, category, or blog pages.
Use the full sitemap URL so there is no ambiguity.
- Use one User-agent block for general rules
- Add Sitemap with the full URL
- Do not block pages you want indexed
Test rules carefully
A small robots.txt mistake can block important pages from being crawled. Review disallow rules before deploying them.
If your goal is search traffic, make sure your main tool pages and blog guides are crawlable.