robots.txt in subdirectory

Question

I have a project that lies in a folder below the main domain, and I dont have access to the root of the domain itself.

http://mydomain.com/myproject/

I want to disallow indexing on the subfolder "forbidden"

http://mydomain.com/myproject/forbidden/

Can I simply put a robots.txt in the myproject folder? Will it get read even if there is no robots.txt in the root?

What is the correct syntax for disallowing the forbidden folder?

User-agent: *
Disallow: /forbidden/

or

User-agent: *
Disallow: forbidden/

Answer 1

From robotstxt.org:

Where to put it

The short answer: in the top-level directory of your web server.

The longer answer:

When a robot looks for the "/robots.txt" file for URL, it strips the path component from the URL (everything from the first single slash), and puts "/robots.txt" in its place.

For example, for "http://www.example.com/shop/index.html, it will remove the "/shop/index.html", and replace it with "/robots.txt", and will end up with "http://www.example.com/robots.txt".

So, as a web site owner you need to put it in the right place on your web server for that resulting URL to work. Usually that is the same place where you put your web site's main "index.html" welcome page. Where exactly that is, and how to put the file there, depends on your web server software.

Remember to use all lower case for the filename: "robots.txt", not "Robots.TXT.

So I'm afraid the answer is that you have to put it in the root folder :-(

With regards to your second question, I believe the correct syntax is the one starting with a forward slash (eg. /forbidden/).

Answer 2

You can't unfortunately. Robots.txt can only go at the root of the domain.

Maybe if you ask the owner of the domain kindly he will oblige?

The first syntax is the correct syntax, but remember it needs to be the absolute path from the root of the domain.