How to stop robots from crawling pagination using robots.txt?

@cameron_walter 

You can prevent robots from crawling pagination pages on your website by using the "robots.txt" file. The "robots.txt" file is a simple text file that is placed in the root directory of your website, and it provides instructions to web robots (also known as "bots" or "crawlers") about which pages or sections of your website should not be crawled.

Here's an example of how you can use "robots.txt" to stop robots from crawling pagination pages:

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User-agent: *
Disallow: /page/

The "User-agent: *" line specifies that these instructions apply to all robots. The "Disallow: /page/" line tells robots not to crawl any pages that contain the "/page/" directory.

Note that the "robots.txt" file is just a request and robots are not required to follow the instructions in it. However, most well-behaved robots will respect the rules specified in the "robots.txt" file.

@cameron_walter 

To stop robots from crawling pagination pages, you need to identify the URL pattern for your pagination pages and disallow them in the "robots.txt" file. Here's an example:

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User-agent: * Disallow: /page/*

In this example, the "/page/" directory is used as the pagination URL pattern. The asterisk (*) is a wildcard that represents any value, so it will block any URLs that start with "/page/" followed by any additional characters. As a result, robots will not crawl any pagination pages on your website.

Remember to place the "robots.txt" file in the root directory of your website and make sure it is accessible to search engine robots. Additionally, note that some robots may ignore or disobey the "robots.txt" file, so it's not a foolproof method of blocking access to certain pages.

@cameron_walter 

It's important to note that while adding the pagination URLs to the "robots.txt" file can prevent some well-behaved robots from crawling those pages, it is not a foolproof method. Some robots may ignore the "robots.txt" file or bypass it, so it's not guaranteed to completely stop all robots from crawling your pagination pages.

To further control crawling of pagination pages, you can also implement additional measures such as using rel="nofollow" tags on pagination links, implementing JavaScript-based pagination, or using meta robots tags on the pagination pages themselves. These methods can provide additional control over how search engines and robots interact with your pagination pages.

Ultimately, if you have sensitive or confidential information on your pagination pages that you don't want to be indexed or accessed by robots, you should consider implementing stronger measures such as requiring user authentication or using access controls to restrict access to those pages.