Creating a robots.txt file.
By Sumantra Roy
Some people believe that they should create different pages for
different search engines, each page optimized for one keyword
and for one search engine. Now, while I don't recommend that people
create different pages for different search engines, if you do
decide to create such pages, there is one issue that you need
to be aware of.
These pages, although optimized for different search engines,
often turn out to be pretty similar to each other. The search
engines now have the ability to detect when a site has created
such similar looking pages and are penalizing or even banning
such sites. In order to prevent your site from being penalized
for spamming, you need to prevent the search engine spiders from
indexing pages which are not meant for it, i.e. you need to prevent
AltaVista from indexing pages meant for Google and vice-versa.
The best way to do that is to use a robots.txt file.
You should create a robots.txt file using a text editor like Windows
Notepad. Don't use your word processor to create such a file.
Here is the basic syntax of the robots.txt file:
User-Agent: [Spider Name]
Disallow: [File Name]
For instance, to tell AltaVista's spider, Scooter, not to spider
the file named myfile1.html residing in the root directory of
the server, you would write
User-Agent: Scooter
Disallow: /myfile1.html
To tell Google's spider, called Googlebot, not to spider the files
myfile2.html and myfile3.html, you would write
User-Agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /myfile2.html
Disallow: /myfile3.html
You can, of course, put multiple User-Agent statements in the
same robots.txt file. Hence, to tell AltaVista not to spider the
file named myfile1.html, and to tell Google not to spider the
files myfile2.html and myfile3.html, you would write
User-Agent: Scooter
Disallow: /myfile1.html
User-Agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /myfile2.html
Disallow: /myfile3.html
If you want to prevent all robots from spidering the file named
myfile4.html, you can use the * wildcard character in the User-Agent
line, i.e. you would write
User-Agent: *
Disallow: /myfile4.html
However, you cannot use the wildcard character in the Disallow
line.
Once you have created the robots.txt file, you should upload it
to the root directory of your domain. Uploading it to any sub-directory
won't work - the robots.txt file needs to be in the root directory.
I won't discuss the syntax and structure of the robots.txt file
any further - you can get the complete specifications from here.
Now we come to how the robots.txt file can be used to prevent
your site from being penalized for spamming in case you are creating
different pages for different search engines. What you need to
do is to prevent each search engine from spidering pages which
are not meant for it.
For simplicity, let's assume that you are targeting only two keywords:
"tourism in Australia" and "travel to Australia".
Also, let's assume that you are targeting only three of the major
search engines: AltaVista, HotBot and Google.
Now, suppose you have followed the following convention for naming
the files: Each page is named by separating the individual words
of the keyword for which the page is being optimized by hyphens.
To this is added the first two letters of the name of the search
engine for which the page is being optimized.
Hence, the files for AltaVista are
tourism-in-australia-al.html
travel-to-australia-al.html
The files for HotBot are
tourism-in-australia-ho.html
travel-to-australia-ho.html
The files for Google are
tourism-in-australia-go.html
travel-to-australia-go.html
As I noted earlier, AltaVista's spider is called Scooter and Google's
spider is called Googlebot.
A list of spiders for the major search engines can be found here.
Now, we know that HotBot uses Inktomi and from this list, we find
and Inktomi's spider is called Slurp.
Using this knowledge, here's what the robots.txt file should contain:
User-Agent: Scooter
Disallow: /tourism-in-australia-ho.html
Disallow: /travel-to-australia-ho.html
Disallow: /tourism-in-australia-go.html
Disallow: /travel-to-australia-go.html
User-Agent: Slurp
Disallow: /tourism-in-australia-al.html
Disallow: /travel-to-australia-al.html
Disallow: /tourism-in-australia-go.html
Disallow: /travel-to-australia-go.html
User-Agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /tourism-in-australia-al.html
Disallow: /travel-to-australia-al.html
Disallow: /tourism-in-australia-ho.html
Disallow: /travel-to-australia-ho.html
When you put the above lines in the robots.txt file, you instruct
each search engine not to spider the files meant for the other
search engines.
When you have finished creating the robots.txt file, double-check
to ensure that you have not made any errors anywhere in it. A
small error can have disastrous consequences - a search engine
may spider files which are not meant for it, in which case it
can penalize your site for spamming, or, it may not spider any
files at all, in which case you won't get top rankings in that
search engine.
An useful tool to check the syntax of your robots.txt file can
be found here. While it will help you correct syntactical errors
in the robots.txt file, it won't help you correct any logical
errors, for which you will still need to go through the robots.txt
thoroughly, as mentioned above.
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Article by Sumantra Roy. Sumantra is one of the most respected
and recognized search engine positioning specialists on the Internet.
For more articles on search engine placement, subscribe to his
1st Search Ranking Newsletter by sending a email to
1stSearchRanking.999@optinpro.com
or by going to http://www.1stSearchRanking.com
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