robots.txt

Generates a 404 error in my logs

[zeus]

there is on my statistic page about how my page is doing a error it says it gets a 404 and this robots.txt, what can that mean.

thanks

zeus

P.s I dont use robots.txt in meta

[toadhall]

Sounds like spider(s) look for your robots.txt file, don't find it, and are passed a 404 error.

[Macguru]

Hi zeus,

Welcome to WebmasterWorld! You will like it.

Here is good info about this file that should reside at root level of your site.

[searchengineworld.com...]

Enjoy!

[Filipe]

If you have no reason to disallow a spider from entering any directory on your site, is there any reason to have Robots.txt at all?

[Macguru]

Yes.

Stat files
cgi-bin
image folder
work in progress
duplicate pages made for different platforms and browsers
personal stuff
clients folders
cloaked pages

Anything that needs to be stored on site you dont want to publish for some reason.

This file can let you disalow specific files or folders to specific well behaving spiders.

If you just want to free your error log file from robots.txt 404, just paste this in a .txt file and leave it at root level.

User-agent: *
Disallow:

[zeus]

Thanks everybody and macguru I have just put my site through that validator and got many errors, but my site works perfect.

If a spider cant find my page that is bad, all my visits come from search engines.

Must I have robot.txt now, because I have never used it before and im listed good under another domain name which site is down now.

zeus

[zeus]

I found a new error thats cald favicon.ico I dont know what that is?

[Rumbas]

Favicon is the little image you get when you bookmark a site in IE.
Try the Site Search on top of this page - very good for finding information.
Favicon [webmasterworld.com]

Welcome btw :)

[zeus]

Thanks for the link, I have forgot everything about ICO because I dont use and I think that is ok for the S.E, but I still wonder about the error about robots.txt, that must mean that they where looking for and diddent find it and thats it and it is not essential for a listing at search engines wright.

thanks all

zeus