Robots.txt Am I missing something?

Am I missing something by not having a robots.txt

[slk230]

I don't currently have a robots.txt file on my site. Am i missing something by not having one?

If so what? How is the best way to implement?

[hakre]

just click on the small glossary link on top and select robots.txt. this will lead you to more information. it's a good thing to have, imho.

[bufferzone]

You need to have a robots.txt and it must have some content.

If you dont have one, the robots will create a lot of errors when trying to look at it. I would guess that having a robots.txt could be taken as a sign of professionalism by some of the engines.

It's easy to make, will not hurt you and might bennefit you

[Robert Charlton]

Here's a link to a thread about Google and robots.txt --

Google and having *no* robots.txt file
could this be hurting your site?
[webmasterworld.com...]

The thread includes a link to a post by GoogleGuy on the subject; but, for whatever reason, the link doesn't work. Here's what GoogleGuy said:

I've seen this hit a couple webmasters lately and wanted to mention it. If someone requests a robots.txt file, don't return some custom 404 page or strange page with HTML, graphics, etc. This can happen if your webserver is configured to return a pretty page for requests when the page doesn't exist.

Essentially, if you are using Apache and have a custom 404 page, then you need at least a blank robots.txt file. See the thread for details.