robot.txt question

[Stanley]

if I place a robot.txt in my root directory to block googlebot, will it block google from visiting my subdomains and subdirectories too?
or do I need to put a robot.txt in every directory individually?

also.. does blocking googlebot cause any problems with adsense?

 

[Jdog]

I believe it will block them all, but why not just do the meta no index no follow?

 

[DewChugr]

You can only have one robots.txt file on a site, it should be at the top level directory. You can specify from there waht directories or files you want included or excluded from crawling. I woud think if your sub domains are under that that it would affect them as well. I think the site that has the rules is robotstxt.org

 

[zenglider]

Google is well behaved when it comes to robots.txt. Blocking Google from spidering your sites may have an adverse affect on AdSense since in order for them to place ads that are in the right context to the site they need to know what is on it. Blocking their bot may leave you showing public announcement ads only.

On another note. Nothing says that a spider has to obey the robots.txt file.