How to Disallow Web Crawlers from Accessing Sensitive Pages with Robots.txt

The robots.txt file is a text file located in the root directory of a website. It instructs search engine crawlers on which pages they can or cannot access.

Why Block Sensitive Pages?

Webmasters often want to prevent crawlers from accessing certain pages for various reasons, such as:

• Protecting user data
• Preventing indexing of duplicate or admin pages
• Reducing unnecessary crawling to improve SEO performance

How to Create a Robots.txt File

Follow these steps to create and configure a robots.txt file:

1. Open a text editor (e.g., Notepad, VS Code).
2. Write rules to allow or disallow access.
3. Save the file as robots.txt.
4. Upload it to the root directory of your website.

Disallowing Web Crawlers from Sensitive Pages

To block search engines from specific pages or directories, use the Disallow directive. Below are examples:

Blocking a Specific Page

User-agent: *
Disallow: /private-page.html

Blocking an Entire Directory

User-agent: *
Disallow: /admin/

Blocking Specific Crawlers

User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /sensitive-data/

Allowing Specific Pages While Blocking Others

User-agent: *
Disallow: /private/
Allow: /private/public-info.html

Testing Your Robots.txt File

To ensure your robots.txt file is working correctly, use Google’s Robots.txt Tester in Search Console.

Best Practices

• Do not use robots.txt to protect sensitive information—use password protection instead.
• Ensure your file is correctly formatted to avoid misinterpretation.
• Regularly check robots.txt to prevent blocking important pages unintentionally.
• Combine robots.txt with meta tags for better control over indexing.