First question that arises in mind whenever we are talking about robot.txt file is what robot.txt is and how to use it effectively. For a common person understanding this file type is not everybody’s cup of tea. Keeping this point in mind Google has made its testing very simpler by introducing robots.txt testing tool in Webmaster Tools. This testing tool can be found in crawler section of Google webmaster’s tool.
In this tool you can test new Web URLs to see whether these are robot.txt enabled or not on in simple language they are banned from spider’s crawling or not. To guide you on complicated directions, it will highlight the specific URL after that you can make changes in files accordingly and test again for any errors left over. When you are done with it what all you have to do is to upload the latest (the one recently we corrected) version of file to your server so that all the changes you have made on file take effect and run smoothly so that your website’s credibility on increases. An added benefit of this tool is that you will be able to review older versions of your robots.txt file, as well as we can check when accessibility issues prohibit us from crawling.
As there may be some errors or warnings shown for your existing websites, we recommend you to double-check their robots.txt files before making any severe changes as they may harm effective working of your website. You can also combine robot.txt testing tool with other parts of Webmaster Tools such as: Fetch as Google tool to use this testing tool more efficiently. If any blocked URLs are reported, you can take help from this newly built robots.txt tester to find the reasons for their blocking and which you can improve. A general difficulty which we all have faced regarding robots.txt files is block CSS, JavaScript, or mobile content and fixing of these issues is generally a minor task once it is detected. Robot.txt tool tester is really very helpful tool for your website to become aware of all problems that are present in your website.
