When you’re building a Blogger blog intending to monetize through Google AdSense, one of the most important technical steps is ensuring that your blog is properly indexed by search engines. This means setting up a clean robots.txt file and a functional sitemap. These two elements work together to guide search engine crawlers, improve your SEO, and demonstrate to AdSense reviewers that your blog is technically sound and ready for monetization.
In this tutorial, I’ll walk you through the entire process step by step, explain why each step is important, and provide examples that you can copy and paste into your own Blogger settings.
🧩 Why Robots.txt and Sitemap Matter
Before diving into the setup, let’s clarify what these files do:
- Robots.txt: This is a small text file that tells search engines which parts of your site they can crawl and which parts they should ignore. For Blogger, this is especially important because the platform automatically generates search result pages (
/search) that can create duplicate content issues. Blocking those pages helps keep your blog’s index clean. - Sitemap: A sitemap is a structured list of your blog’s posts and pages. It acts like a roadmap for search engines, ensuring they can discover and index all your content efficiently. Blogger automatically generates a sitemap, but you need to reference it correctly in your robots.txt file.
Together, these files improve your blog’s visibility in search results and reassure AdSense that your site is well‑organized.
🔧 Step 1: Enable Custom Robots.txt in Blogger
- Log in to your Blogger dashboard.
- Go to Settings → Crawlers and indexing.
- Toggle Enable custom robots.txt to ON.
- You’ll now see a field where you can paste your custom robots.txt code.
📄 Step 2: Add an AdSense‑Ready Robots.txt
Paste the following code into the robots.txt field:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /search
Allow: /
Sitemap: https://YOURBLOG.blogspot.com/sitemap.xml
Explanation of Each Line:
- User-agent: * → Applies the rules to all search engine crawlers.
- Disallow: /search → Blocks Blogger’s internal search pages, which often create duplicate content.
- Allow: / → Ensures all other pages and posts are crawlable.
- Sitemap: → Points crawlers to your sitemap for structured indexing.
This setup is simple, clean, and fully compliant with AdSense requirements.
🗂 Step 3: Locate Your Blogger Sitemap
Blogger automatically generates a sitemap for every blog. The default URL is:
https://YOURBLOG.blogspot.com/sitemap.xml
You can test this by typing the link into your browser. If it loads a structured XML file listing your posts, you’re good to go. This file updates automatically whenever you publish new content, so you don’t need to edit it manually.
🔍 Step 4: Submit Sitemap to Google Search Console
To ensure Google crawls your blog regularly:
- Go to Google Search Console.
- Add your Blogger blog as a property.
- Navigate to Index → Sitemaps.
- Enter
sitemap.xmland click Submit.
This step tells Google exactly where to find your content and ensures your posts appear in search results faster.
✅ Step 5: Verify AdSense Readiness
Once your robots.txt and sitemap are set up, check the following:
- No blocked content: Posts and pages are crawlable.
- Duplicate pages excluded: Search result pages won’t clutter the index.
- Sitemap submitted: Google knows where to find your content.
With these elements in place, your blog meets the technical requirements AdSense reviewers look for.
🚀 Best Practices for Blogger SEO
- Keep robots.txt minimal: Don’t add unnecessary rules that might block important pages.
- Check sitemap regularly: Make sure it loads correctly in your browser.
- Re‑submit sitemap if needed: If you restructure your blog or change URLs, update Search Console.
- Use meta descriptions: Enable search descriptions in Blogger settings and write unique summaries for each post.
- Avoid duplicate content: Don’t republish the same article multiple times under different URLs.
📌 Conclusion
Setting up an AdSense‑ready robots.txt and sitemap is one of the simplest yet most powerful steps you can take to prepare your Blogger blog for monetization. It improves your SEO, ensures smooth indexing, and shows AdSense that your blog is professional and compliant. With this foundation, you’re not only making your blog more discoverable but also signaling to advertisers that your site is trustworthy and well‑maintained.
By following this step‑by‑step tutorial, you’ve eliminated one of the most common technical barriers to AdSense approval. Now you can focus on creating high‑quality content, building your audience, and monetizing your blog successfully.