Is there any value in having a blank robots.txt file?

[NicDale]

I've read an audit where the writer recommended creating and uploading a blank robots.txt file, there was no current file in place.  Is there any merit in having a blank robots.txt file?

What is the minimum you would include in a basic robots.txt file?

[Modi]

Hi, This is what i got

" Web site owners use the /robots.txt file to give instructions about their site to web robots; this is called_The Robots Exclusion Protocol_. It works likes this: a robot wants to vists a Web site URL, say http://www.example.com/welcome.html. Before it does so, it firsts checks for http://www.example.com/robots.txt, and finds:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

The "<tt>User-agent: *</tt>" means this section applies to all robots. The "<tt>Disallow: /</tt>" tells the robot that it should not visit any pages on the site."

More and more people use robots,txt to disallow access to some administration or private folders of the site . If you dont want to hide anything then may be you can leave it blank

[zeepartner]

No use in having a blank robots.txt. Minimum requirement if you want to have your site crawled is this:

User-agent: *
Allow: /

Note that Gagans example above will block the entire site.

[Modi]

i mentioned same only, The "User-agent: *" means this section applies to all robots. The "Disallow: /" tells the robot that it should not visit any pages on the site."

n has added - More and more people use robots,txt to disallow access to some administration or private folders of the site

[NicDale]

Thanks for both of your replies.  As per my question it was around whether there is any value having a blank robots.txt file.  Philipp's answer was right on the money.

[LiamVictor]

I know this is four years old, but there's value in having a blank robots.txt as some tools (including the latest version of the Moz crawler) will baulk at sites without a robots.txt file.