New updates for Google Robots.txt Policy

darkstorm

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Hi all,

Google recently updated its guidelines on robots.txt, clarifying which fields are supported. This update aims to eliminate confusion for website owners and developers, as Google clarified that only certain fields within robots.txt are recognized by its crawlers.

The fields Google officially supports are:
  • user-agent
  • allow
  • disallow
  • sitemap
Google ignores fields that are not explicitly listed in the documentation, such as crawl-delay. This clarification helps prevent websites from relying on unsupported directives that would not affect Google's crawling behavior. Website owners are encouraged to audit their robots.txt files to ensure only supported fields are being used, which helps to optimize how search engines interact with their sites.

This change highlights Google's commitment to maintaining transparency about its search processes, as well as the need for ongoing attention to SEO best practices.
 

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