Ready to analyze
Fetch a URL or paste robots.txt content, then click Analyze// parse and summarize robots.txt directives instantly
Parse and analyze robots.txt files instantly. Inspect disallow rules, allow directives, sitemap references, crawl-delay, and user-agent groups in one place.
Ready to analyze
Fetch a URL or paste robots.txt content, then click AnalyzeType any website URL and click Fetch, or paste robots.txt text directly into the input area.
The tool parses all directives, groups them by user-agent, and extracts sitemaps and crawl-delay settings.
Inspect disallow/allow patterns per bot, sitemap URLs, and any special crawl instructions — copy raw output if needed.
The robots.txt Analyzer parses the standard web crawler exclusion protocol. It identifies every user-agent block, extracts disallow and allow directives, finds sitemap references, and surfaces crawl-delay settings — all in your browser without sending data to a server.
A robots.txt file is a plain text file placed at the root of a website (e.g. https://example.com/robots.txt). It tells web crawlers which pages or sections they are allowed or not allowed to access. It follows the Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP) and is respected by major crawlers like Googlebot, Bingbot, and others.
A Disallow directive instructs a crawler not to access the specified path. For example, Disallow: /admin/ prevents crawlers from visiting any URL under /admin/. A blank Disallow: means all pages are allowed. Note: Disallow: / blocks everything.
An Allow directive explicitly permits access to a path, even if a broader Disallow rule would otherwise block it. For example, you might disallow /private/ but allow /private/public-page/. Allow rules take precedence when they are more specific than a Disallow rule.
The User-agent field identifies which crawler the following rules apply to. User-agent: * applies to all bots. You can have separate blocks for specific bots like User-agent: Googlebot or User-agent: Bingbot, each with their own rules.
The Crawl-delay directive tells a crawler how many seconds to wait between requests. For example, Crawl-delay: 10 means the bot should wait 10 seconds between page fetches. Note: Googlebot ignores this directive — use Google Search Console to control Googlebot's crawl rate instead.
The Sitemap directive in robots.txt points crawlers to your XML sitemap URL(s). This helps search engines discover all your pages faster. You can list multiple sitemap URLs, one per line. This is separate from any user-agent blocks and applies globally.
No — robots.txt only prevents crawlers from accessing those pages. A blocked page can still appear in search results if other sites link to it. To prevent indexing entirely, use a noindex meta tag or X-Robots-Tag HTTP header on the page itself.
Yes. The fetch feature only retrieves the public /robots.txt file from the domain you provide — the same file any crawler would read. No login credentials, cookies, or private data are sent. All parsing happens in your browser; nothing is stored.
A robots.txt analyzer is a tool that reads and parses the robots.txt exclusion file from a website, then presents its directives in a structured, human-readable format. Instead of manually reading raw text, you get a clear breakdown of every user-agent group, every disallow and allow rule, all declared sitemaps, and any crawl-delay instructions — instantly.
The Robots Exclusion Protocol has been a cornerstone of web crawling since 1994. Despite its simplicity, robots.txt files can become complex on large sites, with dozens of user-agent blocks, overlapping rules, wildcards, and multiple sitemap references. This analyzer removes the guesswork by surfacing exactly what each bot is permitted or forbidden to access.
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The parsing process follows these steps. First, the file is split into lines and each line is classified as a directive type: User-agent, Disallow, Allow, Sitemap, Crawl-delay, or a comment (lines beginning with #). Empty lines act as group separators — each time an empty line appears after a user-agent/rule block, it ends that group.
Directives within a group are collected and associated with the user-agents named in that block. A single block can apply to multiple user-agents by listing them consecutively before the first rule directive. Once a non-user-agent directive appears, the group is considered "open" and subsequent rules are added until an empty line closes it.
Sitemap and global directives that appear outside of any user-agent block are collected separately and shown in their own section. This mirrors how major crawlers like Googlebot actually interpret the file.
When both Disallow and Allow rules could match a URL, the longest matching rule wins. This means Allow: /page takes precedence over Disallow: / if the URL is /page, because the Allow path is more specific. In a tie (equal length), Allow wins. This logic is defined in Google's interpretation of the protocol and is what the analyzer uses to flag potential conflicts.
Google and some other crawlers support two wildcard characters in robots.txt:
Disallow: /*.pdf$Disallow: /search$ blocks /search but not /search?q=testThe * in User-agent: * is different — it means "all bots," not a wildcard path. Be careful not to confuse the two.
Several common errors can cause unintended crawling behavior:
/wp-content/ or similar asset folders prevents Google from rendering your pages properly, which can hurt rankings.Disallow: /secret-admin-panel/ tells every bot — and every human — that path exists. Use authentication instead.From an SEO perspective, robots.txt is primarily a crawl budget management tool. For large sites with thousands of pages, strategically disallowing low-value URLs (filtered search results, duplicate paginated pages, internal search pages) helps concentrate crawl budget on content you actually want indexed.
Always pair your robots.txt with an accurate XML sitemap declared via the Sitemap: directive. This gives crawlers a positive signal of what to index, rather than just negative signals about what to avoid. Include all canonical versions of your important pages in the sitemap, and make sure none of them are accidentally blocked in robots.txt.
Test your robots.txt changes with Google Search Console's URL Inspection tool after deployment. Changes to robots.txt can take anywhere from hours to days to be re-crawled, depending on the site's crawl rate.
SEO professionals use robots.txt analyzers during technical audits to verify that important pages are accessible to crawlers. Developers use them before and after site migrations to catch accidental blocks. DevOps engineers check them as part of pre-deployment checklists. Site owners use them to understand what a tool like Googlebot actually sees when it visits their domain.
This tool is entirely browser-based. When you use the URL fetch feature, it retrieves the publicly available /robots.txt from the domain you specify — exactly as any crawler would. All parsing logic runs client-side in JavaScript; your robots.txt content is never sent to our servers or stored.