/rvw/ (reviews) and /photo/ (user-uploaded images) are fully disallowed. Why? Because Tabelog’s value is user-generated trust. If Google indexed every review page, scrapers could steal structured opinions and star ratings without ever touching the site. Blocking them doesn’t stop determined scrapers, but it raises the bar.
A surprising omission. A robots.txt often points to sitemap.xml . Tabelog’s doesn’t. Either they rely on Google Search Console’s submitted sitemaps, or they deliberately avoid publicizing their URL structure. Given the number of blocked paths, the latter feels intentional. The subtext: Defensive design Tabelog’s robots.txt is not about politeness. It’s about asymmetry . They want Google to index their restaurant detail pages (the core content users need), but not the scaffolding that makes those pages discoverable in bulk. tabelog robots.txt
At first glance, it looks like a standard robots.txt . But look closer. It tells a fascinating story about data protection, competitive moats, and Japan’s unique web culture. User-agent: * Disallow: /search/ Disallow: /rgsearch/ Disallow: /kw/ Disallow: /syop/ Disallow: /rr/ Disallow: /list/ Disallow: /rvw/ Disallow: /photo/ Disallow: /map/ Disallow: /guide/ Disallow: /sitemap/ Disallow: /navi/ Disallow: /rank/ Disallow: /shop/%A5%EA%A5%B9%A5%C8 Disallow: /bshop/ Disallow: /rstd/ Disallow: /west/ Disallow: /tokyo/ Disallow: /osaka/ Disallow: /aichi/ Disallow: /kyoto/ Disallow: /hyogo/ Disallow: /hokkaido/ Disallow: /fukuoka/ Disallow: /miyagi/ Disallow: /chiba/ Disallow: /saitama/ Disallow: /kanagawa/ Disallow: /shizuoka/ Disallow: /hiroshima/ What Tabelog is really saying 1. “Search results are off-limits.” The /search/ and /list/ paths are blocked. This is common for large sites to prevent infinite crawl loops, but for Tabelog, it’s strategic: search result pages contain ranked restaurant lists — their core IP. Letting search engines index those would let competitors reverse-engineer their ranking algorithm. /rvw/ (reviews) and /photo/ (user-uploaded images) are fully
The list of Disallow: /tokyo/ , /osaka/ , /kyoto/ , etc., is unusual. Most sites want their city landing pages indexed. Tabelog explicitly blocks them. Why? Possibly because those pages are thin, auto-generated, or contain internal navigation that leads to disallowed content. More likely: Tabelog prefers to control how its regional authority is presented — via their own sitemap and internal linking, not via open-ended crawler access. If Google indexed every review page, scrapers could
For SEOs: Tabelog will rank for restaurant names anyway, because user behavior (searching “Sushi Tokyo Tabelog”) overrides crawl directives. But for anyone wanting structured data at scale? The robots file says everything you need to know: “No.” Would you like a technical breakdown of how to ethically monitor Tabelog changes without violating their robots.txt ?
If you’ve ever tried to crawl Tabelog (食べログ), Japan’s most authoritative restaurant review platform, you’ve met its first line of defense. It’s not a CAPTCHA. It’s not an IP ban. It’s a deceptively simple text file: https://tabelog.com/robots.txt .