WordPress robots.txt SEO

A robots.txt file can make a huge impact on your WordPress blogs traffic and search engine rank. This is an SEO optimized WordPress robots.txt file. Keep in mind that if you mess up the robots.txt file by blocking too much, you could lose all of your rank.

Note: This article is outdated, over the years I've learned to only use robots.txt as an authoritative blacklist. Now my robots.txt is much simpler and I rely on meta tags, as detailed in my SEO article.. sorry rozkan!

Download the complete file: WordPress robots.txt file

I was inspired to revisit this topic after reading Creating the ultimate WordPress robots.txt file, then I revisited this once again and created the: Updated WordPress robots.txt file

Google Says

Make use of the robots.txt file on your web server. This file tells crawlers which directories can or cannot be crawled. Make sure it's current for your site so that you don't accidentally block the Googlebot crawler.

header.php meta seo trick

Place this in your wordpress themes header.php file, if the page is a single, page, or if its the home page then the robots will index and follow links on it. Otherwise search engines will not index the pages but will still follow the links.

seo robots.txt

See the Updated WordPress robots.txt file

User-agent:  *
# disallow all files in these directories
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /z/j/
Disallow: /z/c/
Disallow: /stats/
Disallow: /dh_
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/
Disallow: /contact/
Disallow: /tag/
Disallow: /wp-content/b
Disallow: /wp-content/p
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/askapache/4
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/askapache/c
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/askapache/d
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/askapache/f
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/askapache/h
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/askapache/in
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/askapache/p
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/askapache/s
Disallow: /trackback/
Disallow: /*?*
Disallow: */trackback/




User-agent: Googlebot
# disallow all files ending with these extensions
Disallow: /*.php$
Disallow: /*.js$
Disallow: /*.inc$
Disallow: /*.css$
Disallow: /*.gz$
Disallow: /*.cgi$
Disallow: /*.wmv$
Disallow: /*.png$
Disallow: /*.gif$
Disallow: /*.jpg$
Disallow: /*.cgi$
Disallow: /*.xhtml$
Disallow: /*.php*
Disallow: */trackback*
Disallow: /*?*
Disallow: /z/
Disallow: /wp-*
Allow: /wp-content/uploads/





# allow google image bot to search all images
User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Allow: /*



# allow adsense bot on entire site
User-agent: Mediapartners-Google*
Disallow: /*?*
Allow: /z/
Allow: /about/
Allow: /contact/
Allow: /wp-content/
Allow: /tag/
Allow: /manual/*
Allow: /docs/*
Allow: /*.php$
Allow: /*.js$
Allow: /*.inc$
Allow: /*.css$
Allow: /*.gz$
Allow: /*.cgi$
Allow: /*.wmv$
Allow: /*.cgi$
Allow: /*.xhtml$
Allow: /*.php*
Allow: /*.gif$
Allow: /*.jpg$
Allow: /*.png$



# disallow archiving site
User-agent: ia_archiver
Disallow: /

# disable duggmirror
User-agent: duggmirror
Disallow: /

The Breakdown

disallow files in these directories

User-agent:  *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /z/j/
Disallow: /z/c/
Disallow: /stats/
Disallow: /dh_
Disallow: /about/
Disallow: /contact/
Disallow: /tag/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/
Disallow: /contact
Disallow: /wp-
Disallow: /feed/
Disallow: /trackback/

disallow all files ending with these extensions

User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /*.php$
Disallow: /*.js$
Disallow: /*.inc$
Disallow: /*.css$
Disallow: /*.gz$
Disallow: /*.wmv$
Disallow: /*.cgi$
Disallow: /*.xhtml$

disallow all files with ? in url

Disallow: /*?*

disable duggmirror

User-agent: duggmirror
Disallow: /

disallow WayBack archiving site

User-agent: ia_archiver
Disallow: /

allow google image bot to search all images

User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Disallow:
Allow: /*

allow adsense bot on entire site

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google*
Disallow:
Allow: /*

Google User-agents

Googlebot: crawl pages from our web index and our news index
Googlebot-Mobile: crawls pages for our mobile index
Googlebot-Image: crawls pages for our image index
Mediapartners-Google: crawls pages to determine AdSense content. We only use this bot to crawl your site if you show AdSense ads on your site.
Adsbot-Google: crawls pages to measure AdWords landing page quality. We only use this bot if you use Google AdWords to advertise your site. Find out more about this bot and how to block it from portions of your site.