robots.txt 404 - are search engines down ranking my site?

[Josiah Wallingford]

When I look at my 404 error logs I see 2545 404 error messages on robots.txt

How do I resolve this? Why is there no robots.txt file included with invision community? If search engines keep getting 404 error messages anywhere on my site, they are going to consider the site garbage and lower its ranking, correct?

Is there a best method for adding a robots.txt file?

[opentype]

It doesn’t affect ranking and there is no need to have such a file. You create it yourself as soon as there are things you want to put in there. 

[Josiah Wallingford]

Could I just create a robots.txt file that is blank so that at least they are not getting 404 errors? What effects would that have on them indexing the site?

[opentype]

You can do that to avoid the 404s. That’s the only result. I will not influence indexing/ranking. 

[Joel R]

There are a couple of files in the MP to manage 404 files.  

 

[bfarber]

We don't include a default robots.txt because doing so would overwrite any custom robots.txt you may set up.

[HCICT]

There is a robots.txt on the marketplace and it works pretty nice! ?

 

[Hexsplosions]

I got tired of Webmaster Tools complaining about index issues due to my robots.txt, so these days it is blank.