AI crawler control center
Paste a robots.txt file to uncover blocked discovery bots, training permissions, inherited wildcard rules and syntax conflicts—then generate a safer correction block.
AI crawler access report
The AI Crawler Access & Robots.txt Analyzer checks crawler-specific robots.txt rules, inherited wildcard directives, path restrictions, syntax issues and conflicting access signals so you can understand how your current configuration treats major AI and search crawlers.
Yes. A robots.txt file can tell compliant AI crawlers not to crawl specific URLs, directories or an entire website. However, robots.txt controls crawler access rather than acting as security, authentication or a guarantee of indexing or AI citation. Different AI companies also use different bots for search, user-triggered retrieval and model training, so one robots.txt rule may not represent every AI-related use of your content.
Traditional SEO teams have managed Googlebot and other search crawlers for years. AI search adds another layer because many AI providers now operate multiple user agents with different purposes.
One bot may support AI search discovery, another may collect material that could contribute to model training, and another may retrieve a page because a user explicitly asked an AI assistant to visit it.
This makes a simple question such as “Are AI bots blocked?” too broad. The better question is:
Which crawler is allowed, which crawler is blocked, on which path, and does that match your actual business objective?
The analyzer works locally in your browser. Paste the robots.txt content you want to inspect, choose your access objective and optionally test a specific path.
Most websites expose the file at the root of the hostname:
Copy the full contents of the file rather than only the AI-specific sections.
The analyzer needs the whole robots.txt because crawler-specific rules may interact with broader wildcard groups.
Looking only for the words “GPTBot” or “ClaudeBot” can miss restrictions inherited from other matching rules.
Select whether your objective is maximum AI visibility, AI search visibility while restricting known training controls, or maximum recognized AI restriction.
This matters because AI search access and model-training permissions are not the same decision.
Check each crawler individually, inspect the rule producing the result and review the recommended correction block before changing your production file.
If a particular page matters, use the optional path test to evaluate that URL path rather than assuming one site-wide result applies everywhere.
Modern AI providers may use separate crawler identities for search discovery, model-development crawling and user-triggered retrieval. Your robots.txt strategy should reflect the purpose of each crawler rather than applying one blanket assumption to all AI traffic.
| Crawler / Token | Provider | Primary documented role | Strategic consideration |
|---|---|---|---|
| OAI-SearchBot | OpenAI | Search discovery and content used in ChatGPT search summaries, snippets and links. | Search visibility |
| GPTBot | OpenAI | Control related to content that may be used for potential model training. | Training control |
| Claude-SearchBot | Anthropic | Search-oriented crawling intended to improve relevance and accuracy in Claude search experiences. | Search visibility |
| ClaudeBot | Anthropic | Web crawling associated with material that could contribute to model development and training. | Training control |
| Claude-User | Anthropic | User-directed retrieval when Claude accesses web content in response to a user's request. | User retrieval |
| PerplexityBot | Perplexity | Crawling designed to surface and link websites in Perplexity search results. | Search visibility |
| Perplexity-User | Perplexity | User-triggered page access used when Perplexity retrieves information in response to a request. | User retrieval |
| Google-Extended | A robots.txt product token used to control certain Gemini model-training and grounding uses of Google-crawled content. | AI use control |
A robots.txt file is a set of crawler groups and path rules. Understanding user-agent matching and path specificity is essential when debugging an AI crawler access problem.
Identifies which crawler or crawler group the following rules are intended to apply to.
Requests that a compliant crawler not access URLs matching the specified path.
Explicitly permits access to a path and can be useful when a more specific URL should remain crawlable inside a broader restricted area.
User-agent: * provides rules for crawlers without a more applicable crawler-specific group.
When multiple Allow and Disallow rules match a URL, standards-based robots processing uses the most specific matching path.
Sitemap declarations can help crawlers discover XML sitemap locations, although Sitemap is separate from the core Allow/Disallow access rules.
No. Robots matching is based primarily on the most specific matching path. If an Allow and Disallow rule are equally specific, standards-based handling gives preference to Allow. This is why simply reading the file from top to bottom can produce the wrong conclusion.
An empty Disallow rule under a wildcard group does not request a site-wide crawl block.
A crawler-specific group can request that one recognized bot avoid the entire site.
Restricting one path does not automatically mean the rest of the website is blocked.
The most damaging robots.txt problems are often accidental: inherited rules, copied configurations, staging directives or crawler groups that no longer match your business strategy.
A broad wildcard restriction can affect crawlers that do not have another applicable group.
This should be reviewed carefully on any production site intended to receive organic or AI-driven discovery.
Treating every crawler from one AI provider as interchangeable can unintentionally restrict search discovery when your actual goal was only to limit training-related access.
Development and staging environments commonly use restrictive robots rules. Problems arise when those settings are copied to production during migration or deployment.
The overall site may appear crawlable while a specific directory containing articles, documentation, product pages or tools remains disallowed.
A robots.txt file does not need to name every crawler individually. Whether an unnamed bot is permitted depends on the matching rules and how that crawler implements the protocol.
Robots.txt is publicly accessible and communicates crawl preferences. Sensitive or private information should be protected with real access controls such as authentication and appropriate server security.
Robots.txt answers a permission question. Real crawler access can still fail at other layers of your website infrastructure.
Does the crawler-facing rule permit the requested path?
Does the URL return a usable response instead of a 403, 429, 5xx error or unexpected redirect?
Is Cloudflare, a WAF, bot-protection layer or CDN rejecting legitimate crawler requests?
Are robots meta tags, X-Robots-Tag headers or other directives affecting indexing or presentation?
Is useful content available in a form the requesting system can retrieve and process?
Even after access succeeds, the platform still decides whether the page is relevant and trustworthy enough to surface.
To determine whether recognized AI crawlers have actually requested pages from your server, analyze real server access logs. Permission and observed crawler activity answer two different questions.
The right setup depends on whether your priority is maximum discoverability, selective AI search access, content licensing control or broader crawler restriction.
Appropriate for publishers and businesses that want broad recognized search, retrieval and AI crawler access to public content.
The focus is avoiding accidental restrictions while still protecting private, duplicate or operational areas where necessary.
Useful when you want public pages discoverable in supported AI search experiences while making separate decisions about known training-related controls.
This strategy requires crawler-by-crawler understanding rather than one blanket rule.
Relevant when your policy is to restrict recognized AI access as broadly as practical.
Remember that robots.txt is voluntary and should not replace authentication, firewall rules or other enforceable controls.
Robots.txt can affect whether compliant AI search crawlers are able to fetch particular content. Blocking a search-oriented crawler may therefore reduce one path through which that provider discovers or refreshes your pages. However, crawler access alone does not determine AI mentions or citations, and some AI products also use search indexes, third-party data or user-triggered retrieval systems.
A permitted crawler can request eligible URLs and discover content that would otherwise be unavailable through that crawler.
Some AI products use separate user-triggered retrieval mechanisms, so crawler policies need to be interpreted according to the provider's documented behavior.
Being crawlable only removes one possible barrier. Relevance, factual usefulness, authority, source quality and the AI platform's own retrieval system still influence citation selection.
Rule out crawler restrictions before concluding that weak ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity or other AI visibility is entirely a content problem.
Check whether staging or development restrictions accidentally reached your live environment after a migration or redesign.
Identify outdated crawler groups, redundant directives and inherited rules that no longer match your strategy.
Separate AI search discovery decisions from training-related crawler preferences instead of blocking every AI-associated bot indiscriminately.
Add AI crawler rules to an existing search crawler and indexability review without replacing conventional Googlebot analysis.
Show clients exactly which crawler and path rule produced a restriction rather than reporting a vague “AI bots blocked” warning.
Audit robots.txt alongside indexability, crawlability, XML sitemaps, canonicals and other technical SEO signals.
Identify whether crawler access is creating an avoidable technical barrier before recommending content or authority improvements.
Make more deliberate decisions about search discovery, AI retrieval and training-related crawler preferences.
Validate robots.txt changes during deployments, migrations, infrastructure updates and crawler troubleshooting.
Add transparent AI crawler analysis to technical audits without relying on generic “AI readiness” scores.
Understand whether public content is intentionally available to or restricted from recognized AI crawlers.
Decide whether you want AI search visibility, training-related opt-outs, broader restrictions or a combination before adding crawler directives.
Do not assume that two bots from the same provider serve the same function. Search, training and user-triggered agents may be controlled separately.
Site-wide access can appear healthy while a commercially important directory remains blocked by a more specific rule.
Complex overlapping groups make configuration errors harder to detect and maintain as crawler registries change.
Robots.txt is public. Use proper authentication and server controls for information that should not be accessible.
If robots.txt says Allow but crawler logs show failures, inspect firewall rules, Cloudflare, rate limiting, CAPTCHA challenges and bot-management systems.
AI providers can add, rename or change crawler purposes. Treat any fixed crawler list as time-sensitive technical information.
Robots.txt tells you what a crawler is permitted to request. Server logs tell you what actually requested your server.
If content must remain private or inaccessible, protect it with appropriate authentication and server-side security. Robots.txt files are publicly readable and should not contain information you expect to keep secret.
Direct answers to common questions about ChatGPT crawling, Claude crawler access, Perplexity, Google-Extended, AI training and robots.txt configuration.
An AI crawler is an automated web client operated by an AI-related service. Depending on the provider and user agent, it may support search discovery, user-requested retrieval, model development, training or another product function.
An AI crawler robots.txt checker parses your robots.txt rules and determines how recognized AI-related user agents are treated. A useful checker should evaluate crawler-specific groups, wildcard rules, path matching and potential conflicts rather than simply searching for bot names.
OpenAI uses different web agents for different purposes. OAI-SearchBot is associated with ChatGPT search discovery, while GPTBot is a separate control related to potential model training. Your robots.txt configuration can therefore treat them differently.
OpenAI currently identifies OAI-SearchBot as the crawler publishers should allow if they want site content to be available for inclusion in ChatGPT search summaries and snippets. This is separate from GPTBot's training-related control.
No. GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot have different documented purposes. Blocking GPTBot should not automatically be interpreted as blocking OpenAI's search crawler.
ClaudeBot is Anthropic's crawler associated with collecting public web content that could potentially contribute to model development and training. Anthropic separately documents Claude-SearchBot and Claude-User for search and user-directed retrieval functions.
Claude-SearchBot is Anthropic's search-oriented crawler. Anthropic states that it navigates the web to improve search result quality and that restricting it may reduce a site's visibility in Claude search results.
PerplexityBot is Perplexity's crawler used to surface and link websites in Perplexity search results. Perplexity states that this crawler is not used to crawl content for training AI foundation models.
Yes. Perplexity documents Perplexity-User as a user-triggered agent that may access pages when users ask questions. Perplexity states that this fetcher generally ignores robots.txt because the request was initiated by a user.
Google-Extended is a robots.txt product token that lets publishers control certain uses of Google-crawled content for Gemini model training and grounding. It is not a separate HTTP crawler user agent.
Google states that Google-Extended does not affect inclusion in Google Search and is not used as a Google Search ranking signal. Googlebot remains the crawler associated with conventional Google Search discovery.
Some providers document separate crawler identities for search and training-related functions, which can make selective policies possible. Because crawler names and policies change, verify the provider's current official documentation before editing production rules.
The wildcard group can apply to crawlers that do not have a more applicable matching user-agent group. A crawler-specific group may therefore produce a different result from the general wildcard policy.
When it applies to the crawler being evaluated, Disallow: / requests that the crawler not access paths across the site. Always check which user-agent group the rule belongs to before interpreting it.
An empty Disallow value does not request a path restriction. It is commonly interpreted as allowing crawling where no other applicable restriction exists.
No. Allowing a crawler only removes one possible access restriction. Citation depends on the platform's retrieval and source-selection systems as well as content relevance, quality, authority, freshness and other signals.
Robots.txt primarily controls crawling rather than serving as a universal indexing directive. If you specifically need to control indexing for supporting search crawlers, page-level robots directives such as noindex may be more appropriate, but the crawler must normally be able to access the page to read those directives.
No. Robots.txt is publicly accessible and is not a security mechanism. Protect private content with authentication, authorization and appropriate server-side security controls.
The crawler may be blocked elsewhere. Check your web application firewall, CDN, bot-management service, rate limits, IP restrictions, CAPTCHA rules, authentication requirements and server responses. Robots.txt permission does not override those systems.
Analyze your server access logs and verify legitimate crawler identities where possible. Robots.txt indicates permission; server logs provide evidence of requests that actually reached your infrastructure.
Recheck it after website migrations, security changes, robots.txt edits and major crawler-policy updates. Because AI providers can introduce or rename bots, periodic reviews are sensible for sites where AI visibility or content licensing matters.
Combine crawler-policy analysis with eligibility, server-log and sitemap evidence for a more complete picture of AI discoverability.
Use the AI Crawler Access & Robots.txt Analyzer to identify crawler-specific restrictions, distinguish AI search access from training controls, uncover conflicting rules and build a robots.txt policy that reflects your actual visibility strategy.