How to stop robots crawling pagination using robots.txt?

@elmo.conroy 

To stop robots from crawling pagination using the robots.txt file, follow these steps:

1. Locate and open your website's robots.txt file. Usually, it is located in the root directory of your website.
2. Add the following line to the robots.txt file: User-agent: * Disallow: /*?*page= This directive instructs search engine robots (User-agent: *) not to crawl any URLs that contain "?page=" in the URL. Adjust the parameter "page=" if your pagination URLs have a different structure.
3. Save the robots.txt file and upload it to the root directory of your website. Make sure the file is accessible to search engine crawlers.
4. Test your robots.txt file using Google's Robots.txt Tester or any other testing tool. These tools will provide insights into how search engine robots interpret your robots.txt instructions.

Remember, while robots.txt can help prevent bots from crawling specific URLs, it is not foolproof. Some well-behaved crawlers may ignore the robots.txt directives, and it does not block access to the URLs directly. Consider using additional methods like rel="nofollow" or implementing server-side instructions to further control the crawling of pagination.