Majestic has launched a powerful new project called OpenRobotsTXT, designed to help webmasters, SEOs, and researchers explore and analyze robots.txt files from across the web.

In this guide, you’ll learn what OpenRobotsTXT is, how it works, and how you can start using it to gain deeper insights into crawler behavior and site indexing rules.

What Is OpenRobotsTXT?

OpenRobotsTXT is a public archive and analysis project that aims to collect and make searchable the robots.txt files from websites across the globe. These files tell web crawlers what parts of a website they are allowed to access or must avoid.

The platform was launched by Majestic, the team behind the MJ12bot crawler, and the project’s initial data was bootstrapped from a massive export of robots.txt files collected by that bot.

Why It Matters

Robots.txt files are critical for SEO and privacy. They:

  • Tell search engines what to crawl
  • Help prevent duplicate content issues
  • Block sensitive folders from being indexed
  • Guide ethical bot behavior

Yet until now, there was no open archive to search and analyze these files at scale.

OpenRobotsTXT changes that.

What You Can Do Right Now

Although the crawler hasn’t launched yet, the first version of the website is live at openrobotstxt.org. Here’s what you can do:

1. Download the User Agent Dataset

Majestic has released a free dataset under Creative Commons that contains thousands of user agents discovered across the web.

This dataset lets you:

  • Identify known and unknown bots
  • Understand how user agents are reported
  • Compare how sites treat different crawlers

2. Review Project Goals

The site outlines Majestic’s roadmap:

  • Launch a dedicated OpenRobotsTXT crawler
  • Build a searchable archive of robots.txt files
  • Offer stats and tools for analysis
  • Help webmasters discover changes and monitor bots

3. Get Informed About Crawlers

One challenge in launching new crawlers is transparency. OpenRobotsTXT starts with a page that explains what their crawler does—helping webmasters make informed consent decisions when they see the bot show up.

What’s Coming Next

Over the next few weeks, Majestic plans to roll out:

  • A dedicated crawler to index robots.txt files in real-time
  • Tools to compare how different sites treat bots
  • Analytics to track changes over time
  • Monitoring options to see how your robots.txt file evolves

How to Get Involved

You don’t need an account to start using the site. Just visit openrobotstxt.org and download the public datasets or explore project documentation.

If you’re a developer, SEO professional, or web archivist, you can:

  • Contribute crawler feedback
  • Monitor your site’s logs for MJ12bot
  • Suggest future tools or features

Final Thoughts

OpenRobotsTXT is a long-overdue resource. For the first time, you can explore how robots.txt is implemented across the web in a centralized, transparent, and searchable way.

Whether you want to monitor bots, track policy changes, or study user agent behavior, OpenRobotsTXT is an essential new tool in your SEO toolbox.