Robots.txt

The robots.txt file is a plain text file placed in your website's root directory that provides instructions to web crawlers about which pages or sections of the site they are allowed to crawl. It uses the Robots Exclusion Protocol to communicate with bots from search engines, AI companies, and other automated services.

In AI search optimization, robots.txt has become critically important because it controls whether AI crawlers like GPTBot (OpenAI), ClaudeBot (Anthropic), and PerplexityBot can access your content. Blocking these bots prevents your content from being included in AI training data and real-time retrieval.

Best practices include selectively allowing beneficial AI crawlers, blocking access to admin pages and duplicate content, specifying sitemap locations, and regularly auditing your robots.txt to ensure it aligns with your AI visibility strategy.