Robots Refresher documentation series
Google published a multi-part series restating how the Robots Exclusion Protocol works and how to use page-level controls correctly.
What changed
Between February and March 2025 Google ran a documentation series covering robots.txt fundamentals, page-level directives such as meta robots and X-Robots-Tag, and the extensibility of the Robots Exclusion Protocol for future uses. The series was published as AI crawler controls became a mainstream publisher concern and emphasised that the protocol can be extended with new user-agent tokens without changing the standard. It is guidance rather than a ranking change. Only the month the series began is documented here.
Timing
Rollout began 1 February 2025. No completion date was announced. Rankings typically remain unstable for the whole rollout window, so measurements taken inside it are not a reliable read on the outcome.