The BlogWordPress Robots.txt: Common Mistakes to AvoidPosted on September 26, 2025September 26, 2025

When it comes to running a WordPress site, small technical details often make the biggest difference. One of those details is the robots.txt file.

Robots.txt is a simple text file that guides search engine crawlers on how to interact with your website. While it may seem straightforward, even a minor mistake in this file can lead to serious issues, such as blocking important content from being indexed or allowing unnecessary pages to waste your crawl budget.

Unfortunately, many website owners either overlook robots.txt or use it incorrectly, unintentionally harming their site’s search visibility. The good news is that these mistakes are both common and preventable once you know what to look out for.

In this article, we’ll explore the most frequent robots.txt errors made on WordPress websites and provide practical guidance on how to avoid them, so your site can stay search-friendly and optimized for success.

What is Robots.txt?

The robots.txt file, which is essential to SEO and web development, instructs search engine bots on which sections of a website they can and cannot crawl. 

Robots.txt is a plain text file that is stored in the root directory of your website. The file should be in your site’s root directory, as search engines will ignore it if placed in a subdirectory.

Although robots.txt is powerful, it is a simple document. You can create a basic robots.txt file in seconds using a text editor like Notepad.

How Robots.txt Works

The robots.txt file is placed in a website’s root directory and employs simple syntax to tell bots on which directories or pages to avoid. A line that reads, “Disallow: /private,” for instance, instructs bots to bypass the “private” directory when crawling. On the other hand, “Allow: /public,” would suggest that the “public” directory is accessible for indexing. The file can also guide bots to a website’s sitemap, which helps with indexing by highlighting the site’s structure. 

What Can Robots.txt Do?

Understanding the capabilities of the Robots.txt file helps you use it effectively without unintentionally harming your SEO. Here are some of the key things it can do:

• Robots.txt can control how search engine crawlers access your site, allowing you to guide which parts should be crawled and which should remain hidden.
• It can prevent indexing of low-value or private pages, such as login pages, admin areas, or duplicate content sections.
• Robots.txt can help optimize your crawl budget by directing crawlers to focus on your most important content rather than wasting resources on unnecessary pages.
• It can block access to specific files, directories, or scripts that should not appear in search results, such as internal scripts or temporary files.
• Robots.txt can allow access to essential resources, such as CSS and JavaScript files, ensuring search engines can properly render your website.
• It can provide the location of your XML sitemap, helping crawlers discover and index all of your site’s important content more efficiently.

What are the Common Robots.txt Mistakes?

A corrupted robots.txt file can lead to serious problems that can significantly impact your website. You can steer clear of typical mistakes far more simply if you know what they are. The common mistakes that you can encounter in the future are listed below. 

• The Robots.txt File is not in the Root Directory

It is crucial to know the correct location of the robots.txt file. The file must be in your root directory for search robots to find it. Anywhere else, the file will ruin your website and cause issues.

For this reason, it should directly follow the webpage URL. In simple terms, the URL of your robots.txt file should only have a forward slash between the .com (or similar domain) of your website and the ‘robots.txt’ filename.

If there is a subfolder, your robots.txt file is unlikely to be visible to search robots, and your website will likely behave as if no robots.txt file exists.

Here is an example of the placement.

xyz.com/files/robots.txt – INCORRECT

xyz.com/robots.txt – CORRECT

How to fix

Transfer your robots.txt file to your root directory to resolve this issue. You must have root access to your server to do this.

Some content management systems may automatically upload files to a “media” subdirectory (or something similar), so you may need to go around this to get your robots.txt file where it needs to be. 

• Incorrect Use of Wildcards

In robots.txt files, wildcards (* and $) are symbols that create flexible rules for matching URLs, helping control how search engines crawl and access different parts of a website more efficiently.

• Asterisk (*): Acts as a wildcard to represent “any sequence of zero or more valid characters.” For example, Disallow: /images/* blocks all URLs that start with /images/, no matter what comes after.
• Dollar sign ($): Indicates the end of a URL. For example, Disallow: /*.pdf$ blocks only URLs that end with .pdf.

When employing wildcards, it makes sense to use them carefully because they can potentially apply limits to a much larger section of your website. A poorly placed asterisk can also easily result in your entire website getting blocked from robot access. 

How to Fix

Utilize a robots.txt testing tool to verify that your wildcard rules work correctly. Be cautious when using wildcards to avoid mistakenly blocking or permitting too much.

Wildcards should be used sparingly and only in specified situations. Use them with caution, as they may have far-reaching effects that you were unaware of at the time! 

• ‘Noindex’ in Robots.txt

Adding the “NoIndex” directive in your robots.txt file is an old method that no longer works. As of September 1, 2019, Google no longer complies with ‘noindex’ rules in robots.txt files.

Including a “NoIndex” directive in robots.txt is a common mistake because search engines no longer recognize it as a valid instruction. Instead of excluding pages from search results, this often results in URLs being indexed without content, which creates confusion for both site owners and users.

How to Fix

You can fix this issue by using an alternate “noindex” approach. The most effective way is to add a robots meta tag in the <head> section of the page, which tells Google and other search engines not to index that specific webpage.

You can add the following code to the page code of the URLs you don’t want Google to index:

<meta name =”robots” content=”noindex”/>

This eliminates typos and errors in the robots.txt file while also making things much cleaner and more localized.

• Blocked Scripts And Stylesheets

The web relies on JavaScript and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to function. Thus, restricting them is not a good idea. 

Googlebot needs access to CSS and JS files to properly “see” your HTML and PHP pages and execute these scripts to evaluate the effectiveness of these pages. Therefore, you should not block any scripts or style sheets in your robots.txt file.

If you block these scripts, the crawlers won’t be able to render them, which will significantly lower, if not completely disappear, your domain’s rank. 

How to Fix

Verify whether you are preventing crawlers from accessing necessary external files if your pages appear to be misrepresented by Google or are acting strangely in its results. 

Eliminating the line from your robots.txt file that is preventing access is an easy way to fix this.

Alternatively, if there are files you absolutely must block, provide an exception that restores the access to the required JavaScript and CSS. 

• No XML Sitemap URL

The focus here is primarily on SEO.

You can link your XML sitemap’s URL in your robots.txt file. When Googlebot crawls your website, it looks here first, so it has a head start on understanding the structure and key pages of your website.

While not necessarily a mistake, omitting a sitemap typically does not harm the basic functionality and visibility of your website in search results. However, including your sitemap URL in the robots.txt file is still important if you want to enhance your SEO efforts. 

The sitemap location for your domain will make it easier for the crawler to find your sitemap, which will improve your ranking. For optimization, simplifying things benefits the algorithms ranking your domain. 

How to Fix

Add a simple line like:

Sitemap: https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml

It ensures crawlers know exactly where to look for a full map of your site.

• Access to Development Site

Both letting crawlers crawl and index your under-development pages and blocking them from accessing your live website are bad ideas.

To prevent the public from viewing a website while it is under development, it is best practice to include an ‘allow’ instruction in the robots.txt file. However, it is critical to delete the ‘disallow’ instruction when launching the completed website. 

One of web developers’ most frequent errors is forgetting to remove this line from robots.txt, which might prevent your entire website from being properly crawled and indexed.

How to Fix

If your newly released website is not doing well in search results, or if your development site appears to be getting real-world traffic, check your robots.txt file for a universal user agent disallow rule:

User-Agent: *

Disallow: /

If you see this when you shouldn’t, or if you don’t see it when you should, adjust your robots.txt file as needed, then ensure your website’s search appearance changes accordingly. 

• Ignoring Case Sensitivity

The fact that URLs are case-sensitive for SEO crawlers is a straightforward yet crucial detail that is easy to miss.

Search engines see uppercase and lowercase letters as different URLs, so a rule like Disallow: /Images/ will not block /images/. This mismatch can leave unintended pages accessible to crawlers. This implies that your robots.txt file must take case-sensitivity into account. That said, case sensitivity is crucial when defining different URL directives in your robots.txt file. 

How to Fix

If your robots.txt file is not functioning correctly, check for capitalization errors.

Double-check the exact casing of your folders and file paths, and ensure your robots.txt rules match them precisely. For example, use Disallow: /images/ if your directory is lowercase.

• One Robots.txt File for Different Subdomains

You should have a unique robots.txt file for each subdomain of your website, including staging sites, to provide Google with the most accurate information. The Google crawler might choose to index a domain you do not want it to (for example, a brand-new, still-under-construction site) if you don’t.

How to Fix

Making things more efficient is essential if you want Google to index your content the way you want it to. It will be worthwhile in the long term to take the time to carefully classify each of your domains! 

• Incorrect Use of Trailing Slashes

Trailing slashes (slashes that appear at the end of a word, such as /example/) can provide inaccurate information to bots searching your site. For optimal crawler engagement and ranking, you must provide Google with the right information in the right format. Your robots.txt file must be formatted appropriately if you want to block a specific URL. 

In robots.txt, /directory and /directory/ can behave differently—Disallow: /blog blocks any URL that begins with /blog (like /blog-post), while Disallow: /blog/ specifically targets only the folder and its contents. Using the wrong version can either block too much content or fail to block what you intended.

How to Fix

The solution is to carefully review whether you’re targeting a folder or just a path, and apply the trailing slash only when you want to restrict access to everything inside that directory.

How to Recover From A Robots.txt Mistake

If a robots.txt error has an unfavorable impact on your website’s search engine rankings, the first step is to correct robots.txt and ensure that the new rules have the intended effect. Mistakes in your robots.txt file are common, but they are usually straightforward to rectify once discovered.

Use a testing tool to run your modified robots.txt file first. Once you are sure that robots.txt is operating as you want it to, you can attempt to get your website crawled again as quickly as possible. 

Manually enter the pages into Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools to request indexing if they were previously blocked by robots.txt instructions. Additionally, resubmit a revised sitemap.

All you can do is shorten that time as much as possible by taking the appropriate action and then continuing to monitor until Googlebot applies the corrected robots.txt. 

Wrapping Up!

When it comes to robots.txt files, prevention is always preferable to treatment. A defective file, particularly on larger websites, can negatively impact rankings, visitors, and revenue.

Therefore, you should carefully and thoroughly test any modifications you make to your site’s robots.txt file. Preventing mistakes begins with being aware of what you can do wrong.

Don’t panic when you do make a mistake. Identify the issue, resolve it, and resubmit your sitemap for re-crawling.

Finally, ensure that search engines aren’t neglecting your site because of performance issues. 

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