User-agent: * Crawl-Delay: 20 Robots.TXT File

[Nick 11]

Hello

User-agent: *
Crawl-Delay: 20

Rankings have dropped, checked /robots.txt and the above is what I get, also a screenshot of Google Search Console attached as an error message.

Any advice appreciated I have been onto my web host chat help who say contact a techie.

Thanks

 

[djbaxter]

1. Unless you have a burning need to control crawl speed, remove that section. The only time I have ever used it was back in the days where Yahoo Search was still a thing. Today, most searchbots don't pay attention to that directive anyway, including Google. Let the important searchbots set their own crawl rate and block the others (although blocking in robots.txt is also ignored by many bots.

2. Is that your complete robots.txt file? That's not what the error is complaining about. What are your site settings for sitemaps and how was this submitted to Google?