robots/htaccess

[Solicitors Mortgages]

i have some settings on my .htaccess to ban certain areas,
if i then have a blank"" robots.txt file are those areas still blocked? :confused:
or are these totally different things ??


"" = fully spiderable...like this below
V
V
V
V

User-agent: *
Disallow:

[ServerUnion]

If you have secured directories, the SE's will not be abe to enter,

[sarahk]

search engines "read and respect" robots.txt (or not)
htaccess is the law

there's a big difference

[gatordun]

Use both robots.txt and htaccess!