Crawlie
Home Free tools Site audit Blog About Contact
Run free audit
February 13, 2026

# Robots.txt Generator: Common Mistakes and Best Practices

Most problems with robots.txt Generator aren't caused by not knowing what to do — they're caused by small, easy-to-miss mistakes that compound quietly over time. Here are the ones that come up most often.

Mistake 1: Blocking /wp-admin/ or /cgi-bin/ style paths that don't exist on your platform, copied from a generic template without checking.

Mistake 2: Disallowing CSS/JS folders, which stops Google from rendering the page properly and can hurt how it's evaluated.

Mistake 3: Assuming robots.txt is enforced — it's a voluntary convention; well-behaved crawlers respect it, scrapers with bad intentions often don't.

The fix for most of these isn't more effort, it's a regular check. A few habits that prevent them from creeping back in:
- Point to your sitemap with a `Sitemap:` line at the bottom of the file so crawlers find it without needing a separate submission.
- Test changes in Google Search Console's robots.txt tester before deploying — the file affects every crawler simultaneously and mistakes are immediately live.

Worth reading alongside this: our guide to keyword density, which covers the adjacent side of the same part of a technical SEO audit.

Robots.txt Generator catches most of this automatically, which is the easiest way to stop these mistakes from shipping in the first place.

Try Robots.txt Generator yourself

Everything in this guide runs directly in your browser — no signup, no install.

Open Robots.txt Generator →
More on robots.txt file
The Robots.Txt File Checklist: What to Verify Before You Publish
A short, practical checklist for robots.txt file — the things worth checking every time, not just the first time.
Robots.Txt File FAQ: Questions People Actually Ask
Straight answers to the questions that come up most often about robots.txt file.
Robots.txt Generator vs. Doing It by Hand: Is It Worth Switching?
A practical look at what Robots.txt Generator actually saves you over doing robots.txt file manually, and when manual still makes sense.
Audits & reports▸
Full SEO audit Competitor comparison
Technical SEO▸
Bulk URL indexability checker Robots.txt generator Sitemap generator Schema generator Redirect checker Broken link checker Backlink checker Image URL checker Internal link suggestion tool Keyword cannibalization checker Search intent cluster tool eCommerce keyword research tool Programmatic SEO page generator
Product & e-commerce feeds▸
Multi-channel feed generator Google Merchant feed generator Facebook product feed generator Pinterest product feed generator Google product category finder Competitor product research Merchant feed validator GTIN / EAN / UPC validator Product title optimizer SEO product description generator Slug generator Keyword density
Content & AI search▸
AI crawler &amp; llms.txt checker Readability counter Blog topic generator Google Discover headline generator AI Overview optimizer GEO checker Featured snippet optimizer Topical coverage calculator Meta tag generator
Sharing & distribution▸
SERP preview Open Graph preview UTM builder WhatsApp link generator RSS feed generator
No tools match your search.