web-seo-crawl-indexing

Allow crawling and keep a noindex tag on the page until it drops from the index, then block it if needed. Blocking first with Disallow prevents the crawler from ever seeing the noindex, freezing the entry in results. A 410 Gone response is a faster permanent removal signal.

Robots.txt is advisory and the wrong tool for bandwidth problems. Compliant crawlers like Googlebot are the ones sending you visitors, while scrapers driving the load ignore it. Use rate limiting, caching, or a WAF to control volume instead.

Blocking asset paths removes images from image search entirely, since you cannot put a noindex meta tag on a JPEG. Product feeds also fail validation because the crawler cannot fetch referenced images, which disapproves the listing rather than demoting it.

No. A noindex page is still fetched every time, so it consumes crawl budget. Only blocking the path in robots.txt saves budget, but blocking should be reserved for paths that were never candidates to rank.

A crawl trap is a URL space that multiplies without adding rankable pages, such as filter parameters, language pickers, or calendars. Noindex does not fix it because pages are still fetched; only blocking the trap at its root in robots.txt recovers the budget.

Removing the Sitemap line from robots.txt does not retire a sitemap submitted through a search console; it keeps being fetched. You must retire it at the source in the console. A stale sitemap is worse than none because it steers crawlers into dead ends.