Fetch robots.txt and few of personel random thoughts

What is Robots.text

A robots.txt file is a set of instructions for bots. This file is included in the source files of most websites. Robots.txt files are mostly intended for managing the activities of good bots like web crawlers, since bad bots aren't likely to follow the instructions. A robots.txt file is just a text file with no HTML markup code (hence the .txt extension). The robots.txt file is hosted on the web server just like any other file on the website. In fact, the robots.txt file for any given website can typically be viewed by typing the full URL for the homepage and then adding /robots.txt, The file isn't linked to anywhere else on the site, so users aren't likely to stumble upon it, but most web crawler bots will look for this file first before crawling the rest of the site. you can try to use my tool to fetch robots.txt, FetchRobotstxt

My personel experience

As someone who runs a few hobby websites in my spare time, keeping track of robots.txt can feel like herding cats sometimes! There's always some crawler or bot finding new corners of your site to explore.

A few months back I got an urgent call from a friend who runs an e-commerce site. They had just pushed some changes live and noticed a huge spike in server loads. After some debugging, we realized they had accidentally blocked all bots from crawling the main pages in their robots.txt file! Whoops. It took a bit of scrambling to roll back that change before it hurt their SEO too badly. A good lesson for me to double check our configs more carefully too.

In general, I try to take a lenient approach with bots unless they're clearly misbehaving. Most just want to slurp up content like a hungry vacuum cleaner. As long as they're not hammering the servers or sneaking into places they shouldn't, I say let 'em crawl! It's the spammy bots or legal ones gone rogue that bother me.

For those, targeted Blocks in robots.txt can help. I've also used other tricks over the years like browser fingerprints or tricky URLs that humans wouldn't follow. Not foolproof by any means, but it discourages some of the less motivated scrapers.

At the end of the day, robots.txt is just one tool in the toolbox. Communication with bot owners and keeping an eye on logs remains important too. With some TLC, you can have friendly relations with most web crawlers out there.

Just watch out for any bots acting shady!