Do web crawlers read JSP pages inside the WEB-INF folder

Question

I have a webapp that uses jsp pages. I purposely did not put the jsp pages in the WEB-INF folder because there is only minimal code in the jsp and because at the time (about 5 years ago) I read that webcrawlers wouldn't find the files inside the WEB-INF folder. Therefore affecting my SEO/Rank/Search Engine Search results.

I also put the jsp file locations in the sitemap.xml file. I'm using tomcat and the site is fully public with no login/security requirements.

So, fast forward to now. My site has a pretty good rank and pretty good search results. Should I move the jsps to the WEB-INF folder? Was my source wrong 5 years ago?

Answer 1

The information you read 5 years ago,still holds true. Files under WEB-INF are not directly accessible.