Skip to content

[geo-optimizer] Add robots.txt to docs site to enable AI crawler indexing #43598

Description

@github-actions

GEO Improvement: Add robots.txt to docs site

Source audit: GEO Audit Report — 2026-07-05
Audit date: 2026-07-05
Run: §28747686600

Finding

The docs site (github.github.com/gh-aw/) has no robots.txt at all. The robots.txt check scored 0/18 — the single largest gap in the entire docs site audit. All 17 sitemap pages uniformly score in the Foundation or Critical band (32–44/100), and missing robots.txt (together with missing llms.txt) accounts for up to 36 of the lost points on every page.

From the audit JSON robots_txt.passed: false, robots_txt.details.found: false, and platform citation scores for ChatGPT (50/100) and Perplexity (65/100) both flag "Allow GPTBot in robots.txt" and "Allow PerplexityBot in robots.txt" as top recommendations.

Why this matters

Without a robots.txt, AI crawlers like GPTBot, ClaudeBot, and PerplexityBot cannot explicitly confirm crawl permission, causing them to be cautious about indexing the documentation site. This directly suppresses citation coverage across all major AI platforms (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews). Fixing this single file unlocks +18 points on every page of the docs site.

Suggested fix

  1. Create public/robots.txt in the docs site source (Astro project under docs/ or equivalent):
User-agent: *
Allow: /

User-agent: GPTBot
Allow: /

User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /

User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Allow: /

User-agent: anthropic-ai
Allow: /

User-agent: ClaudeBot
Allow: /

User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /

User-agent: Perplexity-User
Allow: /

User-agent: Google-Extended
Allow: /

User-agent: Google-CloudVertexBot
Allow: /

Sitemap: https://github.github.com/gh-aw/sitemap-index.xml
  1. Verify it is served at https://github.github.com/gh-aw/robots.txt after deployment.
  2. Re-run gh aw audit geo to confirm the robots.txt check jumps from 0/18 to 15+/18.

Generated by 🌍 GEO Optimizer Daily Audit · 37 AIC · ⌖ 17 AIC · ⊞ 5K ·

  • expires on Jul 12, 2026, 8:48 AM UTC-08:00

Metadata

Metadata

Type

No type

Fields

No fields configured for issues without a type.

Projects

No projects

Milestone

No milestone

Relationships

None yet

Development

No branches or pull requests

Issue actions