Thread: robot txt.do i need it

hi, my sites recently slipped out of the ratings in google. Ive seen metioned Robot.txt files, but never completely understood them

Is this something that i need to create for my site, and if so how? Also, i have the phpbb forum added from acp, but google doesnt find any of the forum when typing in keywords. Can i/do i have to add a robot.txt file to phpbb aswell, and will the robot txt file help google find my site better?

Also, i have seen mentioned "google tapped"? Whats this and how does itn work, and will it be of any benefit to my site?

This is my site www.civic5.com and the forum is located at www.civic5.com/forum

Any help mucho appreciated guys

You only need a robots txt if you plan to keep robots from doing certain things or accessing certain pages or indexing certain pages.

Just open notepad and save as.. change the bottom to all files and type in robot.txt.. upload it to your site.. and then tell google its there. Its blank but they will stop flaggin you for it. The forum most likely generated its own i would think..

Im not sure what you mean by GOOGLE TAPPED. clarify that please

Karen

I saw it mentioned on one of our competitors sites. They had apparently made the site and forum "html compliant" and the forum was "google tapped" which they say helps google index the site better and puts you further up the search page?
It seems to have worked, as they have only been live around 2 to 3 weeks, and are at th top of the page in google when typing in keywords that used to bring up my site. we dont figure at all using the main keyords now. And we've been live for ages and were top of the page in the search!! havent seen this google tapped thing explained anywhere tho, so a mystery to me!!

"Google Tapped"?? It's just somebody making up terms on their own ... people do it all the time, and it only impresses themselves! It's probably just their idoism for Google Analytics (friendly URLs), with an English twist.
Focus on the proven methods and proper techniques we offer throughout these Forums to create your website that will perform optimally.

PS: There is no such thing as "HTML Compliant" either! They are trying to spoof their way up the Net, confusing 'W2,' 'W3,' 'W3C' (World Wide Web Consortium), or 'XML Compliant' with 'HTML.'
They probably don't even know the difference, let alone put the effort into the practice!