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Prepare a Robots Directive Handoff for Website Launch
Inventory crawl and indexing directives, owners, environment differences, verification, and recovery before release.
**Published: September 2, 2026**
Robots controls can exist in a robots file, page metadata, and response headers. A copied staging setting or conflicting directive can make important public content difficult for search systems to process.
Inventory control points
List the production robots file, page-level robots metadata, relevant response headers, sitemap references, and platform settings. For each rule, record its purpose, affected routes or file types, owner, and environment-specific behavior.
Separate staging from production
Resolve conflicts before launch
Compare templates, headers, canonical URLs, and robots rules for representative routes. Review allowed pages, intentionally excluded pages, files, and error responses. The marketing or search owner should approve indexing intent; developers implement and evidence it.
Verify the released configuration
Request the public robots file and inspect rendered page metadata and headers. Confirm sitemap locations use the correct host. Record the release identity and sampled URLs so a later change can be compared with the accepted state.
Further reading
Source
Google Search Central robots documentation
Frequently asked questions
Does robots.txt protect confidential pages?
No. Use authentication and appropriate access controls for confidential material.
Who decides which pages are indexed?
The client’s accountable search or content owner should approve intent and exceptions.