Free tool

robots.txt tester

Check whether any crawler — search or AI — can fetch a given path, using Google's actual matching rules.

Allowed
Googlebot/admin/public/guide

Matched "Allow: /admin/public/" in the "*" group. The most specific matching rule wins (14 characters, excluding wildcards).

All crawlers, same path

Rules never merge across groups — a named group replaces the wildcard entirely.

Googlebot
Googlebot-Image
Bingbot
GPTBot
ClaudeBot
PerplexityBot
Google-Extended
CCBot
Bytespider
AhrefsBot

The three rules almost everyone gets wrong

robots.txt looks simple and behaves subtly. Most people assume rules are read top to bottom and that the first match wins. They are not, and it does not. This tester implements the specification Google actually follows, so the answer matches what the crawler will really do.

  • The most specific rule wins, measured by path length — not the first or last match
  • On an exact tie, Allow beats Disallow
  • "Disallow:" with nothing after it allows everything — it does not block the site
  • Only one user-agent group applies; rules never merge across groups
  • A blocked page can still be indexed if other sites link to it — use noindex to keep it out

Frequently asked questions

Does blocking a page in robots.txt remove it from Google?+

No, and this is the most consequential misunderstanding in SEO. robots.txt stops crawling, not indexing. Google can still list a blocked URL it found through links, showing it without a description. To remove a page, allow crawling and use a noindex meta tag.

How do I block AI crawlers?+

Add a group per bot: GPTBot for OpenAI training, ClaudeBot for Anthropic, PerplexityBot for Perplexity, and Google-Extended for Gemini training. Note that Google-Extended never appears as a user-agent string — it exists only as a robots.txt token, and blocking it does not affect Google Search.

Do all crawlers obey robots.txt?+

The major ones do. It is a voluntary protocol with no enforcement, so scrapers and some AI crawlers ignore it. If you need to guarantee a bot cannot fetch a page, block it at the server or CDN.

Why did my Allow rule not work?+

Usually because a longer Disallow matched. Specificity is measured in characters excluding wildcards, so "/admin/" (7) beats "/a*" (2). Paste both rules above and the tester will show which one won and why.

Should I use Crawl-delay?+

Google ignores it entirely — set the crawl rate in Search Console instead. Bing and Yandex do honor it.

See which bots are actually hitting your site

robots.txt tells crawlers what they may do. RankVault's crawler analytics shows what they actually did — including which AI bots are reading your content right now.