How to deal with Search Engines ?

[tlwwolfseye]

Whats the best way of dealing / denying Search Crawlers onto my Forum ?

1.) robots.txt
2.) .htaccess

I do have the syntax to make the Crawlers stop checking into Files & Directories they´re not supposed to check in. But how would be the syntax for a .htaccess ?

Any comments on which solution is better ?

Thank you in advance.

[snakes1100]

A robots file is the correct format to use.

[tlwwolfseye]

I read in many Forum postings in Google that it is not recommended to put the path to the admincp in the disallow syntax of the robots.txt because it can be publically read. In my case, I renamed Admin and ModCP folder so its best to not put them into the robots.txt I suppose, if I don?t want them to be known by simply opening the file, right ?

In my robots.txt I have basically disallowed all php files in my forum root and to some of the folders. The rest i have set to * for search engines. Is it better to specifically set things for every search engine or not ?

Wolfseye

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I realize that since i put in my robots.txt I got a lot more "unwanted" guests on my site. Is it maybe better to not have a robots.txt at all, does that attract more spam ?

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Why did that last reply of mine got merged with my previous reply ?