Robots.txt Checker by URL
Check a website robots.txt file, crawler groups, Allow and Disallow rules, Sitemap directives, and crawl-blocking signals.
Robots.txt review
Review the crawl status, declared rules, sitemap locations, and source file below.
Enter a website URL to check its robots.txt file.
Robots.txt controls crawler access requests; it is not an access-control or security mechanism. Different crawlers may interpret unsupported directives differently, and robots.txt alone does not guarantee whether a URL will be indexed.
Check a website robots.txt file from one URL
Paste a website address and review the robots.txt file returned from the site root.
The checker shows whether robots.txt is available, which user-agent groups appear in the file, how many common rules were found, and any Sitemap directives it declares.
It also shows the returned file so you can inspect the exact rules instead of relying only on a summary.
Robots.txt is a crawl-control file, not a security tool. A blocked URL can still appear in search results in some situations, and unsupported directives may be ignored by some crawlers.
Review robots.txt in three steps
You only need a public URL from the website you want to inspect.
Paste the website URL
Enter the homepage, any page on the site, or the full robots.txt address.
Check the parsed rules
Review availability, user-agent groups, Allow and Disallow counts, and Sitemap directives.
Inspect the source
Read the returned robots.txt content before changing crawl rules on a live site.
Example robots.txt review
Suppose an ecommerce site has a standard robots.txt file with crawler rules and a sitemap declaration.
The checker requests https://example.com/robots.txt, summarizes its User-agent, Allow, Disallow, and Sitemap directives, and displays the file content for review.
What to look for in the results
Focus on rules that affect broad crawler groups and on whether important sitemap locations are declared correctly.
Check User-agent: * rules
Rules under the wildcard user agent can affect many crawlers. A Disallow: / rule can broadly block crawling for that group.
Review specific bot groups
A robots.txt file can define separate rules for named crawlers, so broad and specific groups may behave differently.
Check Sitemap directives
Sitemap lines can point crawlers to XML sitemaps, but a sitemap does not override crawl or indexing directives elsewhere.
Do not use robots.txt for private data
robots.txt is public and cooperative. Sensitive or private content needs real authentication or access controls.
Robots.txt checker questions
Common questions about robots.txt and crawler rules.
What happens if robots.txt is missing?
Search crawlers generally treat a missing robots.txt file as having no crawl restrictions from robots.txt. Other page-level or server-level controls can still apply.
Does Disallow mean a page cannot appear in Google?
Not necessarily. Robots.txt primarily controls crawling. A URL may still be known or displayed in search results in some cases even when crawling is blocked.
Should every website have robots.txt?
Not every site needs complex rules, but a simple robots.txt file can be useful for crawler guidance and Sitemap declarations.
Can I hide sensitive pages with robots.txt?
No. The file is publicly readable and does not enforce access control. Use authentication or proper server permissions for sensitive content.