test robots.txt file for blocking

Ensure your website is crawlable. Paste your robots.txt content and test specific URLs to see if they are blocked by search engine bots.

Robots.txt Directives Tester

Enter the path (e.g., /blog/post-1) or full URL.

Ready to Validate

Enter your robots.txt content and a URL to see the results here.

Why You Should Test Robots.txt File for Blocking

The robots.txt file is one of the most critical components of your technical SEO strategy. It acts as a gatekeeper, telling search engine crawlers like Googlebot, Bingbot, and others which parts of your site they are allowed to visit. However, a single typo or an overly broad "Disallow" directive can accidentally hide your most valuable content from search results. Using a robots.txt validator is the best way to ensure your site remains visible.

How the Robots.txt Checker Works

Our tool simulates how a search engine bot reads your directives. By parsing the "User-agent", "Allow", and "Disallow" lines, it determines the accessibility of any specific URL path. This is particularly useful when you are implementing new site sections or trying to hide sensitive directories like /admin/ or /temp/.

For a complete SEO audit, we recommend using this tool alongside our Sitemap Validator to ensure that the URLs you want indexed are both crawlable and correctly listed in your XML sitemap.

Common Robots.txt Mistakes to Avoid

  • Blocking CSS and JS: Modern crawlers need access to these files to understand your page layout and mobile-friendliness.
  • Trailing Slashes: Disallow: /blog blocks both the folder and any file starting with "blog", whereas Disallow: /blog/ only blocks the folder.
  • Case Sensitivity: Robots.txt directives are case-sensitive. /Admin/ is not the same as /admin/.
  • Conflicting Rules: If you have both an Allow and a Disallow rule for the same path, modern bots usually favor the more specific rule or the "Allow" directive.

Integrating with Other SEO Tools

Validating your robots.txt is just the first step. Once you've confirmed that Googlebot can access your pages, you should ensure your on-page SEO is optimized. Use our Meta Tag Generator to create perfect titles and descriptions, and don't forget to check your Canonical URL Generator to prevent duplicate content issues.

Final Thoughts on Crawler Access

Remember that robots.txt is a request, not a command. While reputable bots like Googlebot respect these rules, malicious scrapers may ignore them. Furthermore, if a page is blocked by robots.txt but has many external links, it might still appear in search results (though without a description). To completely hide a page, use the noindex meta tag instead.

Robots.txt FAQ

The asterisk (*) is a wildcard that applies the following rules to all search engine crawlers that don't have a specific block of their own in the file.

Yes, you can use 'User-agent: Googlebot-Image' followed by a 'Disallow' rule for specific image paths or file types like .jpg or .png.

Google typically caches your robots.txt file for up to 24 hours. If you make urgent changes, you can use the 'Robots.txt Tester' in Google Search Console to ask for a recrawl.

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