Free Tool

Robots.txt Validator

Check your crawler rules. Validate directives and find potential issues.

Enter a domain above to analyze its robots.txt file

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About the Robots.txt Tester

A robots.txt file sits at the root of your domain and tells crawlers which parts of the site they may request. Get it right and you steer crawl budget toward the pages that matter; get it wrong and you can accidentally block search engines from your entire site — or leave private areas wide open.

This tester fetches the robots.txt for any domain from our servers, validates the directives line by line, flags syntax errors and risky rules, and confirms whether major crawlers like Googlebot and Bingbot are allowed.

How to use it

  1. Enter a domain (for example, example.com) — no need to include /robots.txt.
  2. Press Check. We fetch the live robots.txt and parse every directive.
  3. Review the flagged issues: syntax errors, a Disallow: / that blocks everything, or a missing Sitemap line.
  4. Fix the file at your host and re-run the check to confirm crawlers can reach the content you want indexed.

Why it matters for SEO

  • A single stray Disallow: / can deindex an entire site — this is one of the most common and most damaging SEO mistakes there is.
  • Robots.txt shapes crawl budget: blocking low-value paths (faceted URLs, internal search) sends crawlers to the pages you actually want ranked.
  • Remember that robots.txt blocks crawling, not indexing — a blocked URL can still appear in results from links, so use noindex when you truly want a page out.
  • A Sitemap reference in robots.txt helps crawlers discover your URLs faster, which matters most for new or frequently updated sites.

Frequently asked questions

What happens if robots.txt blocks my whole site?

A Disallow: / under User-agent: * tells every crawler to skip the entire site. Search engines stop crawling new content and existing pages can drop out of the index. This checker flags that rule prominently.

Does robots.txt keep a page out of Google?

Not reliably. It blocks crawling, but a blocked URL can still be indexed from external links (without a snippet). To keep a page out of results, allow crawling and use a noindex meta tag instead.

Should I list my sitemap in robots.txt?

Yes. Adding a Sitemap: line pointing to your XML sitemap helps crawlers discover your URLs, which is especially useful for large or new sites.

Is the robots.txt tester free?

Yes — it is completely free with no sign-up. It fetches the live robots.txt for any domain from our servers and validates it for you.

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