diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
index a23ac86..04c4c58 100644
--- a/.gitignore
+++ b/.gitignore
@@ -7,7 +7,6 @@
 /Sandbox
 /node_modules
 /cache/data
-/public
 /kalamar.*.conf
 /kalamar.conf.json
 /kalamar.*.dict
diff --git a/public/robots.txt b/public/robots.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2c03631
--- /dev/null
+++ b/public/robots.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+# robots.txt only applies, when KorAP is accessible
+# from the domain root.
+
+User-agent: *
+Disallow: /api/
+Disallow: /css/
+Disallow: /font/
+Disallow: /js/
+Disallow: /settings/
+Disallow: /corpus/
+Disallow: /gerrit/