Why your robots.txt matters more than you think
What robots.txt actually does, common mistakes that hide your site or expose interesting folders, and a simple template that works for most small organisations.
Bot traffic and crawling for small organisations
Every site that exists on the public internet is visited by bots. Some are search engines that you need. Some are scrapers and scanners that you do not. This hub explains how to tell the difference and what to do about it without turning your day job into bot watching.
The focus here is simple patterns. Robots.txt that does what it should, Cloudflare and firewalls that carry the heavy lifting, and logging that lets you show what really happened when someone questions activity around your site.
Good bots vs bad bots
Robots.txt hygiene
Cloudflare and firewalls
Evidence grade logs
Start here
If bot traffic and crawling are new topics for you, start with these pages. They cover how robots.txt works, how Cloudflare sits in front of your site, and how logging changes the tone of any dispute.
Cloudflare basics for small organisations
How Cloudflare sits between bots and your origin. Which settings matter, which ones can break things, and how it fits with robots.txt instead of replacing it.
How evidence grade logs change the outcome of a dispute
Why good logging and clear notes matter when you are questioned about suspicious traffic, scraping, or access attempts, and how Cloudflare events help you answer with evidence.
What this hub focuses on
The aim is not to block every bot. That is neither realistic nor useful. The aim is to:
- Make sure search engines and other useful crawlers can see what they need.
- Cut down pointless load from junk bots and low value scrapers.
- Spot unusual patterns early so you can respond calmly rather than in a panic.
- Keep a record that stands up if someone challenges your narrative later.
The same approach is used in real disputes and public interest work on The Reasonable Adjustment, where bot traffic is not abstract. It shows up in live logs that affect people and cases.
Articles in this bot traffic hub
You can treat each article like a building block. You do not need to implement everything at once. Start with the part that matches the problem you actually have.
Robots.txt and crawling hygiene
Cloudflare, logging, and noisy traffic
Over time this hub will grow with more detail on bad bot patterns, scrapers, and the kind of targeted probes that turn up when you hold people to account. For now, these pieces give you a solid base to work from.
Who this is for
Teams that see weird traffic but lack time
Staff who keep seeing odd spikes in analytics, strange locations in logs, or repeated access to certain paths, but do not have a full time security team behind them. You need patterns you can apply in an afternoon, not a 300 page playbook.
Leaders who need an honest picture
Directors, trustees, and managers who want to know whether bot traffic is actually a risk for their size, or just noise. You need clear language and a realistic sense of what is worth doing and what can wait.
If you want more than articles
Reading about bots is useful, but it does not map your own logs or clean up your own robots.txt. Sometimes the practical answer is a short piece of focused work that sets a clear baseline.
Ki-Ki can fold bot traffic and crawling into a wider foundations review that covers domains, DNS, Cloudflare, robots.txt, sitemaps, and basic logging. You keep control of your accounts. You get a written picture of how things look now and what to change in order of impact.
If capacity is tight at my end I will say so and give a realistic start window. No scare tactics, no upsell ladder.