Using a robots.txt file

Using a robots.txt file is easy, but does require access to your server's root location. For instance, if your site is located at:

http://adomain.com/mysite/index.html

you will need to be able to create a file located here:

http://adomain.com/robots.txt

If you cannot access your server's root location you will not be able to use a robots.txt file to exclude pages from your index.

The robots.txt is a TEXT file (not HTML!) which has a section for each robot to be controlled. Each section has a user-agent line which names the robot to be controlled and has a list of "disallows" and "allows". Each disallow will prevent any address that starts with the disallowed string from being accessed. Similarly, each allow will permit any address that starts with the allowed string from being accessed. The (dis)allows are scanned in order, with the last match encountered determining whether an address is allowed to be used or not. If there are no matches at all then the address will be used.

Here's an example:

user-agent: FreeFind
disallow: /mysite/test/

disallow: /mysite/cgi-bin/post.cgi?action=reply

disallow: /a

In this example the following addresses would be ignored by the spider:

http://adomain.com/mysite/test/index.html
http://adomain.com/mysite/cgi-bin/post.cgi?action=reply&id=1

http://adomain.com/mysite/cgi-bin/post.cgi?action=replytome

http://adomain.com/abc.html

and the following ones would be allowed:

http://adomain.com/mysite/test.html
http://adomain.com/mysite/cgi-bin/post.cgi?action=edit

http://adomain.com/mysite/cgi-bin/post.cgi

http://adomain.com/bbc.html

It is also possible to use an "allow" in addition to disallows. For example:

user-agent: FreeFind
disallow: /cgi-bin/

allow: /cgi-bin/Ultimate.cgi

allow: /cgi-bin/forumdisplay.cgi

This robots.txt file prevents the spider from accessing every cgi-bin address from being accessed except Ultimate.cgi and forumdisplay.cgi.

Using allows can often simplify your robots.txt file.

Here's another example which shows a robots.txt with two sections in it. One for "all" robots, and one for the FreeFind spider:

user-agent: *
disallow: /cgi-bin/

user-agent: FreeFind

disallow:

In this example all robots except the FreeFind spider will be prevented from accessing files in the cgi-bin directory. FreeFind will be able to access all files (a disallow with nothing after it means "allow everything").

Examples

This section has a few handy examples.

To prevent FreeFind from indexing your site at all:

user-agent: FreeFind
disallow: /

To prevent FreeFind from indexing common Front Page image map junk:

user-agent: FreeFind
disallow: /_vti_bin/shtml.exe/

To prevent FreeFind from indexing a test directory and a private file:

user-agent: FreeFind
disallow: /test/

disallow: private.html

To allow FreeFind index everything but prevent other robots from accessing certain files

user-agent: *
disallow: /cgi-bin/

disallow: this.html

disallow: and.html

disallow: that.html

user-agent: FreeFind

disallow:

If you arrived at this page from a search engine, please visit our MAIN PAGE