How to Use the Robots.txt Editor in SEOLab

Search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo constantly crawl your store to understand your content and decide how to rank your pages. But sometimes, you don’t want every page to be crawled. This is where robots.txt comes in. The SEOLab app makes robots.txt editing incredibly simple even if you have no technical experience. In this guide, we will explain what robots.txt is, why it matters and how you can use SEOLab’s built-in Robots.txt Customizer to control search engine access and improve your store’s SEO health.

A robots.txt file is a small but powerful file stored on your website that gives instructions to search engine crawlers (also known as bots).

It tells search engines:

• Which pages they are allowed to crawl
• Which pages they should avoid
• How they should behave when visiting your site

These rules apply only to compliant search engines like Googlebot. Bad bots can still ignore the rules, so robots.txt should not be used for security but it is excellent for crawl management and SEO.

Your store contains many internal or private URLs, such as:

• /admin
• /cart
• /checkouts
• /orders
• /account
• Duplicate or filtered collection pages
• Preview, testing or script-related URLs

These pages should not appear on Google. In addition to these, Shopify stores often generate duplicate or filtered collection pages, preview or testing URLs and script-related paths that can create unnecessary crawl noise. When search engines spend time crawling these irrelevant or duplicate URLs, it negatively affects your store’s SEO. It wastes your crawl budget, lowers your search rankings, slows down indexing and creates confusion around page quality signals.

A properly optimized robots.txt file prevents search engines from accessing such low-value pages, ensuring that crawlers focus only on high-priority content like your products, collections, blog posts and homepage. By guiding Google toward your most important pages and away from unhelpful ones, robots.txt helps improve your store’s visibility, ranking performance and overall SEO efficiency.

Why Use SEOLab for Robots.txt (Instead of Doing It Manually)?

SEOLab makes managing your robots.txt file effortless and safe, removing the risks and technical challenges that come with manual editing. With built-in auditing, bot-specific controls, and one-click rule management, SEOLab gives you professional-grade SEO control without needing an SEO expert.

How SEOLab Makes Robots.txt Editing Easy

Instead of manually editing code or hiring an expert, SEOLab provides a professional robots.txt editor inside the app.

You can:

• Add rules
• Remove rules
• Block specific URLs
• Allow specific sections
• Manage different bots (Google, Ahrefs, Pinterest, etc.)
• View Shopify default rules
• Optimize crawl paths with one click

This tool is designed for beginners, store owners and marketers who want clean SEO control without touching code.

Features of the SEOLab Robots.txt Customizer

Here is the list of some main features of SEOLab Robots.txt Customizer, mentioned as:

1. Robots.txt Editor (Easy Interface)

SEOLab shows you all your robots.txt rules in a simple, editable format:

• User-agent – identifies which bot the rule applies to
• Allow / Disallow – decides which URLs the bot can crawl
• URL Path – the page or folder being controlled

Example structure:

User-agent:

Disallow: /admin

Disallow: /cart

Allow: /collections/

This clean interface allows you to update rules instantly.

2. Pre-Optimized Default Shopify Rules

SEOLab comes with 44+ optimized Disallow rules used by most Shopify stores to avoid indexing:

• Internal pages
• Login pages
• Checkout flow pages
• Duplicate parameters
• Filtered collections
• Theme preview URLs
• Internal scripts
• Bot-specific URLs

Examples from SEOLab’s rule set:

• /admin – Disallow
• /cart – Disallow
• /checkouts/ – Disallow
• /policies/ – Disallow
• /search – Disallow

These rules ensure Google crawls only high-quality, indexable pages.

3. Support for Specialized Bots

SEOLab allows you to target different bots individually, such as:

• Googlebot
• AdsBot-Google
• AhrefsBot
• AhrefsSiteAudit
• MJ12bot
• Pinterest bot
• Nutch crawler

You can choose to block SEO tools like Ahrefs or MJ12 if they consume unnecessary crawl budget or slow your store.

Example inside SEOLab:

User-agent: AhrefsBot

Disallow: /

4. Bulk Rule Editing

You can add multiple Disallow or Allow rules at once.

Useful for:

• Blocking entire folders
• Preventing specific product URLs from appearing on Google
• Removing outdated paths
• Fixing crawl errors detected in “SEO Site Audit”

5. Safe Editing With Protection

SEOLab ensures:

• You do not delete important system rules
• You do not accidentally block Google from crawling your entire store
• All edits follow SEO best practices
• Shopify standards remain intact

This makes it extremely safe for beginners.

How to Use the Robots.txt Tool in SEOLab (Step-by-Step)

Follow these easy steps to create, edit and manage your robots.txt file in SEOLab without any technical skills.

Step 1: Open SEOLab App in Your Shopify Dashboard

Go to Search Appearance → Robots.txt

Step 2: Review the Existing Rules

You will see all Shopify default rules and SEOLab-recommended optimizations.

Step 3: Add or Edit Rules

Choose:

• URL path
• Rule type (Disallow / Allow)
• Action (add, modify, remove)

Step 4: Apply Bot-Specific Rules

Perfect if you want to:

• Block Ahrefs
• Allow only Googlebot
• Limit Pinterest pixel crawling

Step 5: Save & Publish

Your updated robots.txt goes live instantly at:

yourdomain.com/robots.txt

Step 6: Monitor Crawl Behavior

Use SEOLab’s SEO audit tool to track:

• Indexing issues
• Crawl errors
• Duplicate URLs
• Unwanted crawling

Best Practices When Editing Robots.txt

Here are the recommended tips for Shopify stores:

Don’t block important pages like:

• /products
• /collections
• /blogs
• /pages
• /sitemap.xml

Block unnecessary pages:

• Checkout
• Cart
• Admin
• Filter & search parameters
• Duplicate sorting URLs

Never block your entire website by mistake:

User-agent:

Disallow: /

(Only use this on staging/testing stores.)

Examples of Useful Rules for Shopify

1. Block cart & checkout pages

User-agent:

Disallow: /cart

Disallow: /checkouts/

2. Block filter parameters

Disallow: /collections/?filter*

3. Block duplicate collection sorting

Disallow: /collections/sort_by

4. Block theme preview URLs

Disallow: /preview_theme_id

5. Block SEO tool bots

User-agent: AhrefsBot

Disallow: /

Conclusion

The robots.txt tool in SEOLab is a simple but powerful way to improve how search engines crawl your Shopify store. It helps you block unimportant pages, save your crawl budget, remove duplicate content and control which bots can access your site. Whether you are new to SEO or already experienced, this tool makes everything easier. If you want better rankings, faster indexing and cleaner SEO, using SEOLab’s robots.txt feature is a must.

Updated on: 17/12/2025