Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • SEO Q&A
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • Case Studies
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Discover Brand Authority
      Moz Pro

      Discover Brand Authority

      Learn More
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      What is your Brand Authority?
      Moz

      What is your Brand Authority?

      Take the quiz
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • SEO Q&A

        Insights & discussions from an SEO community of 500,000+.

      June 3 & 4, 2024, Seattle
      MozCon

      June 3 & 4, 2024, Seattle

      Get tickets
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • Case Studies

        Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature: Moz Pro

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. If my website do not have a robot.txt file, does it hurt my website ranking?

    If my website do not have a robot.txt file, does it hurt my website ranking?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4
    4
    633
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • binhlai
      binhlai last edited by

      After a site audit, I find out that my website don't have a robot.txt. Does it hurt my website rankings? One more thing, when I type mywebsite.com/robot.txt, it automatically redirect to the homepage.

      Please help!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • iKrishna
        iKrishna last edited by

        One word answer: NO

        Robots.txt informs search engine crawlers (bots) about which web pages should and should not be crawled and indexed. It uses directives like Allow and Disallow to specify these instructions.

        If you haven't added a robots.txt file to your website, it generally means search engine crawlers will assume permission to crawl all your publicly accessible web pages.

        This can have both positive and negative consequences:

        Positive Impacts:

        • Complete Indexing: All your web pages that are publicly available will likely be crawled and indexed by search engines, potentially improving your website's discoverability in search results.

        Negative Impacts:

        • Unnecessary Crawling: Search engines might crawl pages that aren't valuable for search results, such as login pages, duplicate content, or temporary files. This can overload your server with unnecessary requests.

        • Confidentiality Issues: If you have any sensitive information on your website that shouldn't be publicly indexed (like internal documents or admin pages), it might get crawled without a robots.txt blocking it.

        It's generally recommended to create a robots.txt file to:

        • Prevent crawling of unimportant pages.
        • list itemProtect confidential information.
        • list itemInstruct crawlers on how to crawl your site efficiently.

        Just for your reference check this website robots.txt.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • sarahwalsh
          sarahwalsh last edited by

          Googlebot might not index all pages and blog posts unless you have a robot.txt. We added one to our garden office company website; we noticed organic seo improvements are within the month, we gained more sales.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Alick300
            Alick300 last edited by

            Hi,

            No, your website will work just fine without a robots.txt file.

            Without a robots.txt file search engines will have a free run to crawl and index anything they find on the website.  This is fine for most websites but it’s really good practice to at least point out where your XML sitemap is so search engines can find new content without having to slowly crawl through all the pages on your website and bumping into them days later.

            It shouldn't go to homepage if mywebsite.com/robot.txt doesn't exist shoud go to custom 404 error page.

            Hope this helps.

            Thanks

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • 1 / 1
            • First post
              Last post

            Got a burning SEO question?

            Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


            Start my free trial


            Browse Questions

            Explore more categories

            • Moz Tools

              Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

            • SEO Tactics

              Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

            • Community

              Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

            • Digital Marketing

              Chat about tactics outside of SEO

            • Research & Trends

              Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

            • Support

              Connect on product support and feature requests.

            • See all categories

            Related Questions

            • seoman10

              Disavow File

              After uploading a Google disavow file how long does it take to be processed? Before any trolls get going, not been doing anything dogy, looks like someone has been trying some negative seo on us.

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman10
              0
            • Mat_C

              Meta robots

              Hi, I am checking a website for SEO and I've noticed that a lot of pages from the blog have the following meta robots: meta name="robots" content="follow" Normally these pages should be indexed, since search engines will index and follow by default. In this case however, a lot of pages from this blog are not indexed. Is this because the meta robots is specified, but only contains follow? So will search engines only index and follow by default if there is no meta robots specified at all? And secondly, if I would change the meta robots, should I just add index or remove the meta robots completely from the code? Thanks for checking!

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mat_C
              0
            • McTaggart

              SSL and robots.txt question - confused by Google guidelines

              I noticed "Don’t block your HTTPS site from crawling using robots.txt" here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/https-as-ranking-signal.html Does this mean you can't use robots.txt anywhere on the site - even parts of a site you want to noindex, for example?

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart
              0
            • ntcma

              Should I use meta noindex and robots.txt disallow?

              Hi, we have an alternate "list view" version of every one of our search results pages The list view has its own URL, indicated by a URL parameter I'm concerned about wasting our crawl budget on all these list view pages, which effectively doubles the amount of pages that need crawling When they were first launched, I had the noindex meta tag be placed on all list view pages, but I'm concerned that they are still being crawled Should I therefore go ahead and also apply a robots.txt disallow on that parameter to ensure that no crawling occurs? Or, will Googlebot/Bingbot also stop crawling that page over time? I assume that noindex still means "crawl"... Thanks 🙂

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ntcma
              0
            • AlirezaHamidian

              Urls in Bilingual websites

              1-I have a bilingual website. Suppose that I am targeting a page for keyword "book" and I have included it in that page url for the English version: English version: www.abc.com/book Can I use the translation of "book" in the second language of the website url instead of "book" ? Please let me know which of the following urls are right " French Verison: www.abc.com/fr/book             or www.abc.com/fr/livre                         livre=Book in French 2- Does Google have any tool to check if the second language page of the website has exactly the same content as the English version. What I want to do is for example for a certain page in English version, my targeted keyword is "book" . So my content would be around books. But in the French version of this page, I want to focus on keyword "Pencil" in French instead of "book". Is it wrong or any consequences? That was the main reason for the question number one. Because if it is ok to do what I explained in item 2 then I will set my urls like: In English : www.abc.com/book In French: www.abc.com/fr/crayon                       crayon=Pencil in French

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlirezaHamidian
              0
            • TopFloor

              Looking for guidance on transferring and incorporating content from a purchased website into an existing website

              One of my client’s recently purchased a competitor’s website, and we would like to transfer the content from the competitor’s website (http://www.wilson-hardness.com) to our client’s existing website (http://www.buehler.com); at the same time we want to minimize loss in keyword rankings the competitor’s website has established. The two websites work in similar fields: one measures and offers products in scientific measurement and analysis of various materials.  The other website offers products that are in similar field: hardness testing equipment. Looking for suggestions on how to proceed or recommended reading on the topic.  I’ve tried to do research, but haven’t found anything, so I’m not sure what to topic-names to search. Any guidance would be appreciated.

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TopFloor
              0
            • Markyseo

              Ranking

              Hi All, I have been working on a car  insurance site which targets US market. we have been doing all types of links to the site like - good related directory links, related blogpost and reviews. the site is updated daily with a fresh unique content. what more is needed to get it to the first page. we are currently ranking in the range of 40 - 50 on the page 4 or page 5. we have also recently done a redesign with a new cms, done a good press release but not seeing much of changes. please if anyone in the same industry or with some experience can suggest us. we are using all white hat seo & I can understand the amount of competition in this niche. Thanks

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Markyseo
              0
            • daenterpri

              Redirecting multiple websites to a single website

              I've been trying to run several truck accessory affiliate websites for a quite a while now. I've recently decided to combine all of my affiliate websites into a single community website. This way I'll be able to focus all my energy and link building into a single place and build up a single brand. My question is, how many websites do I try to redirect to the new website at a time? Do I need to spread this out? Or is it ok if I move all of my content and websites at a single time? I have around 30 websites that I could move to this new domain. Thanks! Andy

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | daenterpri
              0
            Moz logo
            • Contact
            • Community
            • Free Trial
            • Terms & Privacy
            • Accessibility
            • Jobs
            • Help
            • News & Press
            • MozCon
            © 2021 - 2024 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.

            Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.