SEO Technical: robots.txt

Guides configuration and auditing of robots.txt for search engine and AI crawler control.

When invoking: On first use, if helpful, open with 1–2 sentences on what this skill covers and why it matters, then provide the main output. On subsequent use or when the user asks to skip, go directly to the main output.

Scope (Technical SEO)

• Robots.txt: Review Disallow/Allow; avoid blocking important pages
• Crawler access: Ensure crawlers (including AI crawlers) can access key pages
• Indexing: Misconfigured robots.txt can block indexing; verify no accidental blocks

Initial Assessment

Check for product marketing context first: If .claude/product-marketing-context.md or .cursor/product-marketing-context.md exists, read it for site URL and indexing goals.

Identify:

1. Site URL: Base domain (e.g., https://example.com)
2. Indexing scope: Full site, partial, or specific paths to exclude
3. AI crawler strategy: Allow search/indexing vs. block training data crawlers

Best Practices

Purpose and Limitations

Point	Note
Purpose	Controls crawler access; does NOT prevent indexing (disallowed URLs may still appear in search without snippet)
No-index	Use noindex meta or auth for sensitive content; robots.txt is publicly readable
Indexed vs non-indexed	Not all content should be indexed. robots.txt and noindex complement each other: robots for path-level crawl control, noindex for page-level indexing. See seo-technical-indexing
Advisory	Rules are advisory; malicious crawlers may ignore

Location and Format

Item	Requirement
Path	Site root: https://example.com/robots.txt
Encoding	UTF-8 plain text
Standard	RFC 9309 (Robots Exclusion Protocol)

Core Directives

Directive	Purpose	Example
User-agent:	Target crawler	User-agent: Googlebot, User-agent: *
Disallow:	Block path prefix	Disallow: /admin/
Allow:	Allow path (can override Disallow)	Allow: /public/
Sitemap:	Declare sitemap absolute URL	Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml
Clean-param:	Strip query params (Yandex)	See below

Critical: Do Not Block Rendering Resources

• Do not block CSS, JS, images; Google needs them to render pages
• Only block paths that don't need crawling: admin, API, temp files

AI Crawler Strategy

User-agent	Purpose	Typical
OAI-SearchBot	ChatGPT search	Allow
GPTBot	OpenAI training	Disallow
Claude-SearchBot	Claude search	Allow
ClaudeBot	Anthropic training	Disallow
PerplexityBot	Perplexity search	Allow
Google-Extended	Gemini training	Disallow
CCBot	Common Crawl	Disallow

Clean-param (Yandex)

Clean-param: utm_source&utm_medium&utm_campaign&utm_term&utm_content&ref&fbclid&gclid

Output Format

• Current state (if auditing)
• Recommended robots.txt (full file)
• Compliance checklist
• References: Google robots.txt

Related Skills

• seo-technical-sitemap: Sitemap URL to reference in robots.txt
• seo-technical-crawlability: Broader crawl and structure guidance