Question 1

Do I really need a robots.txt file on my website?

Accepted Answer

Yes — every professional website should have one. Without it, all search engine crawlers and bots will index everything by default, including admin pages, checkout flows, and duplicate content. A well-configured robots.txt also prevents crawl budget being wasted on pages that shouldn't appear in Google, leaving more budget for the pages you actually want ranked.

Question 2

Is this robots.txt generator free?

Accepted Answer

Completely free, no account required, no limits. Build your rules visually, preview the output with live syntax highlighting, validate it for errors, and download the file in seconds. No email signup, no watermarks, no premium tier.

Question 3

How do I upload my robots.txt to my website?

Accepted Answer

Place the downloaded robots.txt file at the root of your domain — it must be accessible at https://yourdomain.com/robots.txt. For most hosting providers, upload it to your public root folder (often public/, www/, or public_html/). For WordPress, it goes in the same directory as wp-config.php. For Shopify and Squarespace, you manage robots.txt through the platform settings.

Question 4

Can I stop AI companies from scraping my content?

Accepted Answer

Yes — this is one of the most valuable uses of robots.txt today. The Block AI Bots preset adds rules for GPTBot (OpenAI), ChatGPT-User, CCBot (Common Crawl), anthropic-ai, and Claude-Web — the main scrapers used to train large language models. While ethical AI companies honour these rules, some scrapers do not. For critical content protection, combine robots.txt with server-side rate limiting.

Question 5

How do I test if my robots.txt is working correctly?

Accepted Answer

After uploading, visit Google Search Console → Settings → robots.txt to use Google's built-in tester. You can enter any URL on your site and Google will tell you whether it is allowed or blocked by your current robots.txt. You can also simply visit https://yourdomain.com/robots.txt in your browser to confirm the file is accessible and contains your expected rules.

Robots.txt Generator