no robots.txt = bad?

[nano1]

Does NOT having a robots.txt file potentially harm PR? I guess what I am trying to determine is the default behaviour of bots?PR is entirely detimined by offsite factors. Specifically backlinks.Oh ok, so I should concentrate on (things like) that then. Thanks!I read having a robot file can actually be a bad thing. Not so much for SE's, but for security reasons. By telling SE's not to go somewhere, you are telling hackers where to go. Don't dig up my treasure please...it's hiding in this directory....Yeah i have often thought exactly the same thing camp. Search engines wont find it if it's not linked to, so theres no point listing sensitive files and directories like admin.php /admin/ /secrets/ in a handy txt file for everyone to see.Its like having a postit note on the front of a safe saying "please don't try the combination 128865 because it unlocks the safe"I would put more concern into sitemap files than a robots file for Google.So I checked my sites error logs and this came up more than once:Code: [ Select ]just put a blank txt file called robots.txt in your root folder.Yeah that's what I thought - talionking wrote:i dont think any search engine penalizes you for not having a robot.txt file, i didnt have one for years and had great placement,. but recently my traffic has been climbing and making my server costs jump so i block pdf!, zip! files and i was able to shave some bandwidth off my bill I agree that robots.txt isn't essential for your SEO, and has negavite side-effects..There are more effective ways of blocking certains from accessing specific content (user-agent blocking on certain directories using .htaccess, for example).BUT, if nothing else, EVERY site of mine has a robots.txt that blocks Google Images (and other image box) from indexing stuff.While Google images can send a LOT of referrals to my sites, they're ALL useless referrals. They're coming to find an image they can steal and use in their own thing (whatever that ends up being), and NOT looking for actual content, and NOT clicking on ads or purchasing anything.So, that's why I block image bots. The ones that don't respect robots.txt I simply ban from accessing the site completely using .htaccess directives.Would it be possible to send any user trying to access an image to your index if the referer is google images?Sure, that's definitely doable. It's standard referral blocking.Assuming people try to load your images full size (as opposed to inline using <img> tags), you can set it to just forward to your homepage.I've seen many people that already do this (not only that, but they set their pages to break out of Google Images frameset too).Hello.Can anyone tell me how to set that up? (what Axe just described. how to re-direct image to homepage)Thank you.