A robots.txt file is a text file that website owners use to tell web crawlers, like Googlebot, which parts of their website they don’t want crawled. It’s like a set of instructions that says, “You can crawl these pages, but stay away from these.”
This file is placed at the root directory of a website, often at the address https://www.example.com/robots.txt. It’s formatted in a simple way, with commands that specify which pages or directories should be crawled or blocked.
The robots.txt file doesn’t actually stop crawlers from accessing any page. Instead, it’s a request or guideline that well-behaved crawlers will generally follow.