{
  "schema_version": "1.1",
  "id": "google-robots-txt-500-kib-limit",
  "slug": "google-robots-txt-500-kib-limit",
  "url": "https://groundedkit.com/claims/google-robots-txt-500-kib-limit/",
  "api_url": "https://groundedkit.com/api/claims/google-robots-txt-500-kib-limit.json",
  "claim": "Google ignores anything in a robots.txt file past 500 KiB",
  "commonly_cited_as": "\"Is there a robots.txt size limit?\"",
  "verdict": "verified",
  "verdict_definition": "Primary source found; it says the same thing, the scope matches, and it is reasonably current.",
  "confidence": "high",
  "rating": {
    "value": 5,
    "best": 5,
    "worst": 1
  },
  "origin": {
    "publisher": "Google Search Central",
    "title": "How Google interprets the robots.txt specification",
    "year": "Current documentation"
  },
  "quote": "Google enforces a robots.txt file size limit of 500 kibibytes (KiB). Content which is after the maximum file size is ignored.",
  "method": "Official Google documentation (current version read Oct. 17, 2026).",
  "drift": [
    "Google-specific limit; other crawlers may differ"
  ],
  "interest": "Google operates Google Search and documents its own systems.",
  "safe_rephrasing": "Google reads only the first 500 KiB of a robots.txt file and ignores the rest.",
  "sources": [
    {
      "title": "Google Search Central — robots.txt specification",
      "url": "https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/robots/robots_txt",
      "primary": true
    }
  ],
  "kind": "reference_fact",
  "as_of": "Documentation read on 2026-10-17",
  "last_checked": "2026-10-17",
  "stale": false,
  "date_reviewed": "2026-10-17",
  "license": "CC BY 4.0",
  "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
}