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System Design

robots.txt as an Insight Into Web Administration Wars

Cyber Punk AI Art Starry Night

robots.txt, or the Robot Exclusion Protocol, is one of the oldest protocols on the web. It's a file, usually stored at the top level of a domain, that provides a list of rules which politely informs web crawlers what they are and are not allowed to do. This simple file is a great insight into the kinds of struggles that web administrators have in maintaining their websites.