Robots.txt and Sitemap

A map and a set of instructions telling Google how to navigate your site

📖 Detailed description

Robots.txt and the sitemap are like a map and a guidebook for the Google bots that visit your site. Robots.txt tells them where they may and may not go, while the sitemap shows all the important places worth visiting.

Imagine you own a large store. Robots.txt is like the "Staff only" signs on certain doors - you are telling Google not to index your login page, shopping cart, or admin panel. The sitemap is like the store map by the entrance - it shows where all the departments and products are.

Without these, Google may miss important pages or waste time crawling unnecessary things like system files or duplicates.

Most common problems

No robots.txt

Google does not know whether it may crawl the whole site

Blocking important pages

Accidentally hiding pages from Google

No sitemap

Google may not find all of your pages

Outdated sitemap

Google looks for pages that no longer exist

How to fix it?

Create a simple robots.txt - even if everything should be accessible

Add a link to your sitemap in robots.txt

Generate your sitemap automatically whenever you add new content

Do not block CSS and JavaScript - Google needs to see the page like a user does

Regularly check that robots.txt is not blocking important pages

Examples

Good example

A robots.txt with clear rules and a link to a current sitemap

Bad example

Disallow: / (you are blocking the entire site from Google!)

🔗 Related indicators

📱

Mobile friendliness

Does your site work well on a phone? That is how most people view it!

🔗

Canonical URLs

Which address is the "official" one when the same content lives at several URLs

🚀

Core Web Vitals

Google's three scores that measure the real experience of using your site

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