#870 by installs
Virtual Robots.txt
Virtual Robots.txt automatically creates a robots.txt file for your site. Your robots.txt file can be easily edited from the plugin settings page.
- Installs
- 40,000+
- Rating
- 4.3 (10)
- Updated
- 2 months ago
WP Robots Txt
WP Robots Txt Allows you to edit the content of your robots.txt file.
- Active installs
- 40,000+
- #857 of 1,000
- Downloads, all time
- 607.2K
- 607,169
- Downloads, 30 days
- 9.4K
- 2.4K in the last 7
- Rating
- 5.0 / 5
- 21 reviews
- Last updated
- 2 months ago
- Aug 24, 2026
- Version
- 1.3.6
- 11 releases
Upkeep and compatibility
| Last updated | August 24, 2026Updated in the last 3 months |
|---|---|
| Tested up to | WordPress 7.1.4Covers WordPress 7.1.4, the current release |
| Needs WordPress | 5.3.0 or newer |
| Needs PHP | 7.0 or newer |
| First published | March 5, 2012 |
| Support, last two months | No threads opened |
Reviews
5.0 / 5 from 21 reviews
| 5 stars | 20 |
|---|---|
| 4 stars | 1 |
| 3 stars | 0 |
| 2 stars | 0 |
| 1 star | 0 |
Downloads, last 30 days
What the author says it does
WordPress, by default, includes a simple robots.txt file that’s dynamically generated from within the WP application. This is great, but how do you easily change the content?
Enter WP Robots Txt, a plugin that adds an additional field to the “Reading” admin page where you can do just that. No manual coding or file editing required!
Simply visit https://your-site.com/wp-admin/options-reading.php and you can control the contents of your https://your-site.com/robots.txt
Changelog
The opening of the plugin's own description. The full text, installation notes and changelog are on its WordPress.org page.
Questions the author answers
I totally screwed up my `robots.txt` file. How can I restore the default version?
Delete all the content from the Robots.txt Content field and save the privacy options.
Could I accidently block all search bots with this?
Yes. Be careful! That said, robots.txt files are suggestions. They don’t really block bots as much as they suggest that bots don’t crawl portions of a site. That’s why the options on the Privacy Settings page say “Ask search engines not to index this site.”
Does discouraging search engines change robots.txt?
No. Since WordPress 5.3 that setting adds a noindex meta tag. It does not add Disallow: / to robots.txt. Your saved rules are still served. Add Disallow: / yourself if you want crawlers to skip the site.
Why is my edited robots.txt not used?
WordPress only serves the virtual robots.txt when there is no physical robots.txt file in the site root. Delete or rename that file to use this plugin.
Where can I learn more about `robots.txt` files?
Here is a general guide by Google and here is the WordPress SEO documentation.
Latest changelog entry
- Compatibility with WordPress 7.1
- Stop HTML-escaping robots.txt output (it is text/plain; this broke URLs with &)
- Store sanitized plain text instead of esc_html() in the option
- Decode legacy HTML entities from older saved content
- Fix default Disallow/Allow paths on subdirectory installs (match core admin_url())
- Guard sitemap defaults for WordPress 5.3–5.4 and when sitemaps are disabled
- Use esc_url_raw() for the default Sitemap line
- Warn when a physical robots.txt file will override this plugin
Screenshots
A view of the admin option
Tagged
Plugins that share its tags
Real-time SEO guidance, schema, and AI built in. Help search engines and AI systems understand your content. All AI tools included, no hidden fees.
- Installs
- 10+ million
- Rating
- 4.8 (27.8K)
- Updated
- 4 days ago
#5 by installs
LiteSpeed Cache
All-in-one unbeatable acceleration & PageSpeed improvement: caching, image/CSS/JS optimization...
- Installs
- 7+ million
- Rating
- 4.8 (2.8K)
- Updated
- 11 days ago
#13 by installs
Rank Math SEO – AI SEO Tools to Dominate SEO Rankings
Grow your organic traffic and AI visibility with powerful SEO tools, XML sitemaps, Schema automation, and built-in AI SEO, all in one place.
- Installs
- 4+ million
- Rating
- 4.8 (7.5K)
- Updated
- 25 days ago
AIOSEO is the WordPress SEO plugin. Boost SEO rankings with AI SEO tools, schema, meta descriptions, XML sitemaps & rank tracking.
- Installs
- 2+ million
- Rating
- 4.7 (5.2K)
- Updated
- 9 days ago
#56 by installs
XML Sitemap Generator for Google
Generate multiple types of sitemaps to improve SEO and get your website indexed quickly.
- Installs
- 1+ million
- Rating
- 4.8 (2.2K)
- Updated
- 43 days ago
Where this page's numbers come from
Read from the WordPress.org plugin API on , when WordPress 7.1.4 was the current release. WordPress.org rounds active installs into buckets. These are the directory's figures, not my verdict, and I haven't tested this plugin. The author takes donations at their donate page.