What is a Robots.txt File?
A robots.txt file is a web standard (formally codified in IETF RFC 9309 — Robots Exclusion Protocol) located at the root of a website (/robots.txt) that instructs automated web crawlers and search engine spiders which URL paths they are permitted or forbidden to access.
Auditing and parsing robots.txt rules is critical during technical SEO reviews to verify that vital landing pages are not inadvertently blocked by overly broad Disallow: / rules, and to extract all authoritative XML sitemap endpoints.
How to extract crawl directives from robots.txt
- Paste or upload robots.txt. Drop a robots.txt file or paste its raw plaintext contents into the input area above.
- Click Parse Robots.txt. The parser splits rule blocks by User-Agent, filters comments (#), and identifies Allow, Disallow, Crawl-delay, and Sitemap directives.
- Review crawler permissions. Inspect separate rules for search engine bots (Googlebot, Bingbot) and AI scrapers (GPTBot, CCBot, ClaudeBot).
- Export structured CSV or JSON. Download the complete directive dataset to Excel or JSON for technical SEO audits and compliance reports.
Extracted Directives & Fields
- User-Agent Groups: Specific crawler identifiers (
Googlebot,Bingbot,*,GPTBot,ClaudeBot,PerplexityBot). - Disallow Paths: Blocked URL patterns, folders, and query parameters.
- Allow Paths: Explicitly permitted sub-paths overriding parent disallows.
- Crawl-delay & Request-rate: Crawler throttle intervals and rate limits.
- Sitemap URLs: Full XML sitemap and sitemap index locations referenced in the file.
- Host Directive: Preferred domain mirror declarations.
Why Client-Side Parsing Matters
Pre-production and staging robots.txt files often list confidential internal endpoints, unreleased product directories, and administrative portals. This tool executes 100% locally in your browser, guaranteeing zero transmission of internal site structures or crawler access policies.
Frequently asked questions
Does this parser support RFC 9309 standards?
Yes. The tool follows the RFC 9309 Robots Exclusion Protocol, including path prefix matching, wildcard expressions (*), and end-of-URL anchors ($).
Can I extract all Sitemap URLs from robots.txt?
Yes. All 'Sitemap:' directive declarations are automatically parsed, deduplicated, and listed in the exported table.
How does it handle AI bot directives (GPTBot, ClaudeBot)?
The extractor isolates each User-Agent block individually, making it easy to see which specific AI crawlers or LLM training bots are blocked or permitted.
Can I export the rules table to Excel CSV?
Yes. Click 'Download CSV' to export a clean tabular sheet with User-Agent, Directive, and Path columns.
Are my robots.txt contents sent to any server?
No. All parsing is done locally in your browser memory via JavaScript.