User-agent: Applebot
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php
# Crawl-budget control (2026-07-09): Applebot was crawling the effectively-infinite
# /flip-a-coin-<N>-times/<coin>/<background>/ combination space (~72% of origin PHP-FPM load).
# Block those combos + background variants for Applebot only; the real pages (preset N, coins,
# decision coins, articles, ?q=) stay crawlable so the site still appears in Apple search.
#
# CORRECTION (2026-08-26): the 2026-07-09 note claimed these combos "all canonicalize to the
# preset pages". That is NOT true - verified live, each combo URL is SELF-canonical and
# index,follow. Fixing that is a theme-side change and is tracked separately. Do not add a
# Disallow for the combo space to the * group until the canonical is fixed, or the ~1,784
# already-indexed combo URLs will be stranded (Google could no longer read the new canonical).
Disallow: /flip-a-coin-*-times/*/
Disallow: /*bg-
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/fcc/tool/modals.php

User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php
# 2026-08-26: modals.php is a lazy-loaded UI fragment (flip-count / background pickers) that
# js/a.min.js fetches at runtime. It is NOT content and has ZERO impressions in Search Console
# (verified 2026-07-01..08-26). Googlebot was fetching it 26,705 times over 08-16..08-26, which
# was 30-45% of the entire crawl budget for this site. Blocking it here reclaims that budget.
# NOTE: robots.txt only affects crawlers - real users still fetch it normally, so the modals
# keep working. Do NOT 403/404 this path: that WOULD break every modal on the site.
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/fcc/tool/modals.php

Sitemap: https://flip-a-coin.com/sitemap_index.xml