UtilitySEO

Check robots.txt.
Avoid blocking yourself.

A robots.txt checker that confirms you are not accidentally blocking search engines.

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★★★★★Matt S.
Cheaper than what I was using and far easier to get around. I had never seen keyword data laid out so visually before, the topic clusters especially, which made the whole thing easy to understand.
Live scan · utilityseo.com
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Grade A
Scanning 247 pages
+23 issues found
19 fixed
4 critical12 warning84 passed
Why teams choose UtilitySEO
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AI engines tracked

robots.txt controls crawling, not indexing, and the difference bites

The single most expensive misunderstanding in technical SEO is treating robots.txt as a way to keep pages out of search results. It is not, and using it that way produces the opposite of what you intended.

Disallow tells a crawler not to fetch the URL. It does not tell anyone not to index it. If other pages link to a disallowed URL, search engines can and do index it from those links alone, which is why you occasionally see a result with a real URL, no description, and a note that the page could not be crawled.

The trap that catches almost everyone

Someone wants a page out of the index. They add noindex to the page. Then, to be thorough, they also disallow it in robots.txt.

That combination guarantees the page stays indexed. The noindex instruction lives in the page, and robots.txt has just forbidden the crawler from fetching the page, so the instruction is never read. The rule is straightforward once you see it: to remove a page from the index, it must remain crawlable. Apply noindex, leave it crawlable, wait for the recrawl, and only then consider disallowing it.

Other things worth verifying

The file must be at the root of the host to have any effect, and it is scoped per host, protocol and port, so the http and https versions of your domain are separate files as far as a crawler is concerned. Google caps the file it will process at 500KB. Rules are matched per user-agent group, and a crawler obeys only the most specific group that matches it, so a specific User-agent: Googlebot block means Googlebot ignores your User-agent: * rules entirely rather than combining them.

Blocking CSS and JavaScript is another own goal. Search engines render pages, and a page whose stylesheet is disallowed is evaluated as the unstyled version, which frequently looks broken and mobile-hostile.

How UtilitySEO handles this

The audit reports what your robots.txt is actually doing rather than only whether the file exists, including whether the directives conflict with the indexing signals on the pages themselves.

See for yourself

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Real Google scores for performance, SEO and accessibility, plus a ranked list of exactly what to fix first, in under a minute.

Runs a full SEO + performance audit (mobile + desktop) · takes ~30 seconds · no signup required

Loved by teams that rank

Matt S.

So much cheaper than my previous software whilst also offering far more insight into my issues and industry keywords.

Highly recommended.

Reece M.

UtilitySEO doesn't overwhelm you with useless data.

Easy to use and makes tracking my info so much better.

Simple pricing

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For solo founders and consultants running a handful of sites.

£48/mo
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Frequently asked questions

Yes, a misconfigured robots.txt can hide pages from Google. UtilitySEO checks it as part of every audit.
No, and it can cement it in place. A disallowed URL can still be indexed from external links, and it will appear without a description because the content was never fetched. To remove a page, use noindex and keep the page crawlable so the instruction can be read.
Not strictly. A missing file means everything is crawlable, which is a perfectly reasonable default for a small site. A malformed file is considerably worse than no file, so if you are not sure what a rule does, removing it is usually safer than guessing.
The Entrepreneur plan is £48/mo with every tool unlocked, site audits, keyword and rank tracking, competitor monitoring, AI fix lists and AI brand tracking. Enterprise is £149/mo for unlimited seats, projects and white-label. There are no per-feature add-ons.
Yes. Run a free 30-second scan with no signup, or start a 30-day full-access trial with no credit card. You only pay if you decide to stay.

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