Can Google see .txt files?

by disi
7 replies
  • SEO
  • |
Hello,

My webmaster 'upgraded' my website and develped it in a way that there are no html files. There is layout and .txt files where is body text(copy). Will Google see those parts of text that are loaded from .txt files? I am thinking of course about SEO purposes.
#files #google #txt
  • Profile picture of the author debra
    Here's a tool that will show you what the Google crawlers see when they go to your site:

    Spider simulator tool
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  • Profile picture of the author Mickm
    Google actively checks for a robots.txt so yep, it can read .txt files, if it can find them.
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  • Profile picture of the author jiht76
    Google can see even on our underpants!!!

    ... and yes, they can read .txt files. You need to set up a robots.txt file to avoid this... theoretically
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  • Profile picture of the author localyocal
    Why would your webmaster go from using HTML files to TXT files? This seem quite counterintuitive to me.
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    • Profile picture of the author askloz
      Think of text files as an easier way to read content and more importantly links.

      if you create a sitemap.txt and place all your links on your site in this file and save the file as UTF-8 format, and submit it to the search engine OR provide a link to that file, google or any other search engine, other than yahoo, will read this file and then proceed to go to all the links in that file.

      Yahoo has a different file name they require so their search engine can pick it up, ie, urllist.txt which should also be saved in the encoding format of UTF-8

      Originally Posted by localyocal View Post

      Why would your webmaster go from using HTML files to TXT files? This seem quite counterintuitive to me.
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  • Profile picture of the author DanielFonda
    Think of google like the smartest search engine there is.
    It can mostly do anything, so the answer is YES. Your .txt files will be able to be read.
    Usually any site not containing flash shouldn't have any major difficulties with google.
    (Oh and even flash sites are starting to get found by google- after all it's the worlds most popular search engine)!
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    http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-...ml#post1157486 - Backlink building, article writing services (cheap)
    http://www.comedy-blog.net
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  • Profile picture of the author disi
    Thank you all. There was a question 'why'...my webmaster did it so I could easily change text on my pages. I am not that familiar with creating websites and as I sometimes need to change one line of text or something it will be easier when I do it than when I call him every time to do such small change. HTML is easy and I could change text in HTML file but he wanted to make it as easy as possible.
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