hugo/docs/content/en/templates/robots.md

title	linkTitle	description	categories	keywords	menu	weight	aliases
Robots.txt file	Robots.txt	Hugo can generate a customized robots.txt in the same way as any other template.	templates	robots search engines	docs parent weight templates 230	230	/extras/robots-txt/

To generate a robots.txt file from a template, change the site configuration:

{{< code-toggle file="hugo" >}} enableRobotsTXT = true {{< /code-toggle >}}

By default, Hugo generates robots.txt using an internal template.

User-agent: *

Search engines that honor the Robots Exclusion Protocol will interpret this as permission to crawl everything on the site.

robots.txt template lookup order

You may overwrite the internal template with a custom template. Hugo selects the template using this lookup order:

1. /layouts/robots.txt
2. /themes/<THEME>/layouts/robots.txt

robots.txt template example

{{< code file="layouts/robots.txt" >}} User-agent: * {{ range .Pages }} Disallow: {{ .RelPermalink }} {{ end }} {{< /code >}}

This template creates a robots.txt file with a Disallow directive for each page on the site. Search engines that honor the Robots Exclusion Protocol will not crawl any page on the site.

{{% note %}} To create a robots.txt file without using a template:

1. Set enableRobotsTXT to false in the site configuration.
2. Create a robots.txt file in the static directory.

Remember that Hugo copies everything in the static directory to the root of publishDir (typically public) when you build your site.

{{% /note %}}