User-agent: *
Allow: /

# Block admin and system directories
Disallow: /admin/
Disallow: /xhr/
Disallow: /staging/

# Block search pages and query parameters that cause crawl traps
Disallow: /search/
Disallow: /search?*
Disallow: /*?s=
Disallow: /*?q=
Disallow: /*?query=
Disallow: /*?keyword=

# Block preview and embed URLs (non-content)
Disallow: /preview/story-
Disallow: /amp/preview/story-
Disallow: /embed/

# Block common pagination, sorting, filtering parameters to avoid crawl bloat
Disallow: /*?page=
Disallow: /*?sort=
Disallow: /*?order=
Disallow: /*?filter=

# Block known low-value internal paths
Disallow: /alfoo
Disallow: /sildoo
Disallow: /dutas
Disallow: /metsmall

# Block font files to save crawl budget (no SEO impact)
Disallow: /*.woff$
Disallow: /*.woff2$
Disallow: /*.ttf$
Disallow: /*.otf$

# Allow CSS, JS, and images needed for rendering and Discover
Allow: /*.css$
Allow: /*.js$
Allow: /images/

# Explicitly allow Googlebot-News full access
User-agent: Googlebot-News
Allow: /

# Sitemaps to help Google discover your content efficiently
Sitemap: https://www.stattimes.com/news-sitemap-daily.xml
Sitemap: https://www.stattimes.com/sitemap-daily.xml
Sitemap: https://www.stattimes.com/sitemap-daily-updated.xml