Primary related guide or tool
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/guides/ai-crawler-audit-checklist.htmlrobots.txt, noindex, and canonical: the difference
A plain-English explanation of three controls that are often confused during SEO and AI crawler setup.
Fast answer
If your goal is to avoid using the wrong control for the job, start with this framing: teams block pages in robots.txt when they really need noindex, or use canonical tags to hide private pages. The useful deliverable is a decision table for crawl, index, and duplicate-control choices.
This page is intentionally conservative. It treats crawler files, URL inspection, feeds, and server logs as discovery and measurement aids, not as guaranteed ranking levers.
When to use this playbook
Use it when non-technical founders and marketers need a concrete next step and a page that can be linked from a hub, a community answer, a README, or a launch checklist. The page should help someone make a decision even if they never buy anything or contact the site owner.
The strongest pages in this topic cluster have three traits: they answer one narrow question, they include a copyable artifact, and they link to the relevant tool or proof page so the reader can act immediately.
Recommended workflow
- Use robots.txt to guide crawling.
- Use noindex when a page can be crawled but should not appear in search.
- Use canonical to consolidate duplicate public pages.
- Never rely on these for access security.
Pre-publish checklist
- crawl intent identified.
- indexing intent identified.
- canonical target chosen.
- private data protected by auth.
Copyable working note
Use this as a starting point in a ticket, README, client note, or launch log. Edit it to match the real site before publishing.
Need to hide from users: use authentication.
Need to prevent indexing: consider noindex.
Need to reduce crawl: use robots.txt.What not to count as proof
Do not count this setup as traffic by itself. A submitted sitemap, an IndexNow receipt, a crawler log hit, or an indexing request can show discovery work, but none of them proves rankings, impressions, clicks, conversions, or AI citations. Organic proof should come from Search Console, analytics, qualified referral evidence, or server logs interpreted for the right purpose.
The main pitfall for this topic is: Using robots.txt as a privacy mechanism.
Related resources
Next supporting resource
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/tools/ai-crawler-robots-txt-checker.htmlAll free tools
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/tools/Proof dashboard
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/proof.html