Why is Google saying that the User-Agent line is invalid?

Question

I have the following robots.txt file:

User-agent: * Sitemap: https://m.mysite.com.au/sitemap.xml

and when I use the Webmaster Tools to validate it I get it showing that the user agent line is incorrect.

However when I validate it, it comes back as "Allowed".

In both cases it is the same file. So my questions are:

1. What is wrong with the User-Agent line?
2. I am being asked to remove the User-Agent line. While I understand that * means all agents I don't understand why it has to be removed.
3. Any ideas why Google is giving inconsistent results?

Answer 1

This is because...

User-agent: *
Sitemap: https://m.mysite.com.au/sitemap.xml

...would be incorrect.

The correct syntax for the robots.txt is:

To disallow all:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

To allow all:

User-agent: *
Disallow:

To disallow specific directories:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /tmp/
Disallow: /junk/

Examples taken from here: http://www.robotstxt.org/robotstxt.html

The correct syntax for the site map is:

Sitemap: https://m.mysite.com.au/sitemap.xml

You cannot restrict sitemaps using the robots.txt file. You should place the sitemap last though I am not sure that is a requirement.

If you wish to allow all and specify a sitemap, it would be:

User-agent: *
Disallow:

Sitemap: https://m.mysite.com.au/sitemap.xml