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Robots.txt Sitemap with Relative Path
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Hi Everyone,
In robots.txt, can the sitemap be indicated with a relative path? I'm trying to roll out a robots file to ~200 websites, and they all have the same relative path for a sitemap but each is hosted on its own domain.
Basically I'm trying to avoid needing to create 200 different robots.txt files just to change the domain. If I do need to do that, though, is there an easier way than just trudging through it?
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Hi Nicholas,
Unfortunately not. The sitemap reference has to be absolute. (You can confirm this by using the crawler access tool within WMT's)
I'd suggest that you create a PHP script to create a robots.txt file with the correct domain rather than having to do it manually.
Good luck!
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