How to Create a robots.txt File (Without Breaking Your SEO)

Here's a scenario that happens more often than you'd think: a website owner adds a robots.txt file to keep search engines out of their admin area, accidentally blocks the entire site, and wonders why their traffic dropped to zero.

The robots.txt file is simple in concept—it tells search engine crawlers which pages they can and can't access. But the syntax is unforgiving. One wrong line, and things go sideways fast.

What Does robots.txt Actually Do?

When Googlebot (or any search engine crawler) arrives at your site, the first thing it does is look for a file at yoursite.com/robots.txt. This file contains instructions like:

User-agent: *
Allow: /
Disallow: /admin/
Disallow: /private/

This tells all crawlers ("*" means everyone) that they can access most of the site, but should stay out of /admin/ and /private/.

Simple enough, right? The problem is, a small mistake can have big consequences.

Common Mistakes People Make

Blocking everything by accident. If you write Disallow: / without any Allow rules, you've just told Google to ignore your entire website.

Forgetting the trailing slash. Disallow: /admin is different from Disallow: /admin/. The first one also blocks pages like /admin-panel which probably isn't what you meant.

Not including a sitemap link. While not strictly required, adding your sitemap URL makes it easier for search engines to find all your pages.

When You Actually Need robots.txt

Not every website needs complex rules. But you probably want one if:

• You have admin pages, login areas, or backend sections that shouldn't appear in search results
• You're running a staging or development site that should stay private
• You want to prevent crawlers from hitting resource-heavy pages (like search results pages with lots of filters)

The Safer Way to Create One

Instead of writing the file by hand and hoping for the best, you can use a generator that shows you the output in real time. Our robots.txt Generator lets you:

• Add rules visually (choose "Allow" or "Disallow" from a dropdown)
• Apply presets for common scenarios
• Add your sitemap URL
• Download the finished file instantly

You see exactly what you're creating before you deploy it.

A Quick Sanity Check

Before you upload a new robots.txt, there's a simple test: search Google for site:yoursite.com and see how many pages show up. After you make changes, check again in a few weeks. If the number suddenly drops to near zero, something went wrong.

Most sites won't need anything fancy. A basic configuration that blocks internal pages and points to your sitemap is usually enough. The key is getting it right the first time.