Key Takeaways
Google removed the English version of its robots.txt FAQs page.
This change could make it harder for SEOs and webmasters to access specific technical details on how Googlebot crawls and indexes websites.
The shift may indicate Google is consolidating and reorganizing its technical guidance for webmasters.
Google recently made a change to its robots.txt "Frequently Asked Questions" page. This page helped website owners understand how Google crawls and indexes sites.
The detailed English version of the FAQs page is now gone. If you click on that page, it sends you to a more basic Introduction page instead. The “FAQs” pages in other languages are still there. Just the English one was removed.
An expert in search engine optimization named Alexis Rylko noticed this change fast. He shared a screenshot showing that the English FAQs page redirects now.
This matters for SEO pros because those FAQs were an important guide on how Google works.
Here is the screenshot he shared on X.
By removing the English FAQs, Google may be reorganizing or consolidating that content somehow. This could make it tougher for SEOs to get answers to certain technical questions they relied on that page for. Some SEOs are worried about losing a helpful resource. Others want to see how Google might improve that information.
This change fits with Google's wanting to present information more neatly across different countries. As Google updates its guidance, we will be watching closely to see how it impacts SEOs.