ChatGPT can now crawl the Internet with a crawler bot. This will allow it to gain far more knowledge about the Internet. But it still can not access URLS pasted in chat. This is amazing though, but this can be blocked in your robots.txt if you do not wish the bot to crawl your own website. Add this to your robots.txt and this will not be allowed on your website.
# OpenAI disallowed GPT crawling
User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: / |
Access Your Robots.txt File:
- Log in to your WordPress dashboard.
- Navigate to “Settings” and select “Reading.”
- Scroll down to the “Search Engine Visibility” section.
- Ensure that the option “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” is unchecked. This setting can inadvertently block search engines, so it should be disabled if you want your site to be indexed.
Create or Edit Your Robots.txt File:
- Use a text editor or FTP client to access your website’s root directory.
- Look for an existing
robots.txtfile. If it doesn’t exist, you can create one using a text editor and save it as “robots.txt” in your root directory.
Basic Robots.txt Configuration:
Here’s a basic configuration that you can use as a starting point:
User-agent: * Disallow: /wp-admin/ Disallow: /wp-includes/ Allow: /wp-content/ Allow: /wp-content/uploads/ |
Sitemap location. This is the path to your sitemap XML file.
Sitemap: https://yourwebsite.com/sitemap.xml |
Crawl Delay: You can add a crawl delay if you want to control the speed at which search engines crawl your site.
Test Your Robots.txt File:
- Use tools like Google’s Robots Testing Tool or Bing’s Robots.txt Tester to validate your robots.txt file. Ensure that it doesn’t block essential pages or resources.
Regularly Review and Update:
- Periodically review and update your robots.txt file, especially when you make changes to your site’s structure or content.
WordPress SEO Plugins:
Consider using SEO plugins like Yoast SEO or Rank Math. These plugins can help you manage your robots.txt file and other SEO-related settings more easily.
Monitor SEO Performance:
After optimizing your robots.txt file, monitor your site’s SEO performance using tools like Google Search Console. This will help you track how search engines are crawling and indexing your site.