Morrnaire

Morrnaire

Robots.txt Generator

A robots.txt generator creates the robots.txt file that tells Google and other search engines which pages of your Nigerian business website to crawl and index — essential for controlling your SEO and preventing duplicate content issues.

Crawl rules

Rule 1
Disallow
Allow
robots.txt
10 lines

How to generate a robots.txt file for your Nigerian website

Start by selecting a CMS preset — WordPress, Next.js, Shopify, WooCommerce, or Laravel — to auto-fill common crawl rules for that platform, then customise the user-agent, disallow, and allow paths for each rule. Add a sitemap URL so Googlebot and Baidu know where to find your pages, and optionally set a crawl delay if your Nigerian shared hosting plan needs a breather between bot requests. Once your rules are configured, copy the generated text and upload it as robots.txt to the root of your website.

When should a robots.txt be used?

Every Nigerian website that wants to optimise its search engine crawl budget should have a robots.txt. It tells Googlebot, Baidu, Yandex, and other crawlers which parts of your site to index and which to ignore — preventing them from wasting bandwidth on admin pages, shopping carts, or API endpoints. For a Lagos e-commerce store running WooCommerce on shared hosting, blocking /cart/ and /my-account/ ensures Google focuses on product pages instead of burning through your monthly bandwidth allowance.

Practical use cases for Nigerian businesses

  • A Lagos-based WordPress news site blocking /wp-admin/ and /wp-includes/ from search results while allowing /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php for core functionality — saving crawl budget for article pages that actually drive ad revenue.
  • An Abuja SaaS company using Next.js disallowing /api/ and /_next/ static chunks from being indexed, so only the public-facing landing and pricing pages appear on Google.
  • A Port Harcourt dropshipping store on Shopify blocking /cart/, /checkout/, and /account/ pages to prevent thin checkout content from diluting search rankings for product pages.
  • An Ibadan e-learning platform blocking /dashboard/ and /admin/ from Google while allowing course listing pages to rank for Nigerian student searches.
  • A Kano agro-business using WooCommerce blocking /wc-api/ and /addons/ to keep crawlers focused on product pages and blog content about farming techniques.

Frequently asked questions

Where do I upload the robots.txt file?

Upload it to the root directory of your domain — for example, https://www.yourdomain.com/robots.txt. If you use a hosting provider like Netlify or Vercel, place it in the public folder of your project so it is served at the root path.

Can robots.txt block sensitive pages from search results?

Robots.txt instructs well-behaved crawlers not to access those pages, but it does not guarantee they will not be indexed. For truly sensitive content — like admin dashboards or customer data — always add authentication or password protection alongside your robots.txt rules.

What does Crawl-delay do?

Crawl-delay tells search engine bots how many seconds to wait between successive requests to your server. This is essential for shared hosting plans common among Nigerian small businesses — providers like Whogohost, SmartWeb, and QServers often limit concurrent connections, and aggressive crawling can slow down the site for real visitors or trigger bandwidth overage charges.

Do all search engines respect robots.txt?

Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Baidu all respect robots.txt directives. Yandex is also common for Nigerian sites with Russian traffic. However, some lesser-known crawlers and malicious bots may ignore them entirely. For comprehensive protection, combine robots.txt with a web application firewall like Cloudflare and proper server-level access controls.

What is the Clean-param directive for?

The Clean-param directive tells Google to ignore tracking parameters like utm_source, gclid, and fbclid when crawling your URLs. This prevents the same page from being crawled multiple times with different query strings, saving your crawl budget and reducing server load.

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