Google.com/WebmasterTools

In the previous posts about the Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP) we explored what's already possible to do with its various components — namely robots.txt and the URI level controls. In this post we will explore how the REP can play a supporting role in the ever-evolving relation between automatic clients and the human web.

Hello 2025! (Yeah, we know, time flies!) We've had some exciting plans in the works for Search Central Live (SCL) Asia Pacific this year, and we're super excited to let you in on what we've been up to. We've been listening closely to your feedback, and we're cooking up something different than what we usually do–something bigger, deeper, and more tailored to you!

With the robots.txt file, site owners have a simple way to control which parts of a website are accessible by crawlers. To help site owners further express how search engines and web crawlers can use their pages, the web standards group came up with robots meta tags in 1996, just a few months after meta tags were proposed for HTML (and anecdotally, also before Google was founded). Later, X-Robots-Tag HTTP response headers were added. These instructions are sent together with a URL, so crawlers can only take them into account if they're not disallowed from crawling the URL through the robots.txt file. Together, they form the Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP).

A long-standing tool for website owners, robots.txt has been in active use for over 30 years and is broadly supported by crawler operators (such as tools for site owners, services, and search engines). In this edition of the robots refresher series, we'll take a closer look at robots.txt as a flexible way to tell robots what you want them to do (or not do) on your website.

We're very excited to announce that Search Central Live is going to Madrid for the first time on April 9! The event will have a mix of presenters from the Google Search, News, and Partnerships teams and the content will be delivered in English and Spanish, but we'll have live translation.

On April 2, 2025 we'll be in Johannesburg, South Africa for the very first Search Central Live event in Africa! We're excited to welcome you at Search Central Live South Africa and talk about all things Google Search!

Every now and then we get questions about robots.txt, robots meta tags, and the control functionality that they offer. Following our December series on crawling, we thought this would be the perfect time to put together a light refresher. So, if you're curious about these controls, follow along in this new blog post series!

We're excited to announce that Search Central Live is coming to New York City for the first time on March 20, 2025. The Google Search team has organized events in the city several times, but this time we're bringing our main Search event to the city that never sleeps. Come and join us for a day of discussion, listening, and meeting new people.

We're excited to announce that Search Central Live is returning to São Paulo in 2025. Following our successful events in 2023 and 2024, we're continuing our mission to help Brazilian businesses enhance their site's performance in Google Search. And this year we're visiting Recife for the first time.

Mobile searchers will soon see a cleaner, more streamlined look for how URLs appear in search results. Initially introduced as part of the "site hierarchy" feature, we've found that the breadcrumb element isn't as useful to people who are searching on mobile devices, as it gets cut off on smaller screens. Starting today, we'll no longer show breadcrumbs on mobile search results in all languages and regions where Google Search is available (they continue to appear on desktop search results).