AI Crawler Atlas / domains
crunchbase.com: AI crawler policy in robots.txt
robots.txt as fetched on 2026-10-10: crunchbase.com disallows 10 of 22 AI and search crawlers from the site root: GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended, CCBot, meta-externalagent, Bytespider, Applebot-Extended, cohere-ai, Diffbot, omgili. It leaves the search and citation crawlers and the user-action fetchers open.
A protective stance that stays visible to AI answers: the file refuses training crawlers and leaves open the crawlers that let answer engines cite and link the site.
This reports what the file asks. It does not show whether a crawler can actually reach the site: many sites also block crawlers at their CDN or firewall, and some crawlers ignore robots.txt.
Training crawlers
Disallowing these keeps a site's content out of future model training. It does not remove what was already collected.
| Crawler | Operator | Status | How the file treats it |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPTBot | OpenAI | disallowed | named in the file |
| ClaudeBot | Anthropic | disallowed | named in the file |
| Google-Extended | disallowed | named in the file | |
| CCBot | Common Crawl | disallowed | named in the file |
| meta-externalagent | Meta | disallowed | named in the file |
| Bytespider | ByteDance | disallowed | named in the file |
| Applebot-Extended | Apple | disallowed | named in the file |
| Amazonbot | Amazon | not disallowed | covered by the default rule |
| cohere-ai | Cohere | disallowed | named in the file |
| Diffbot | Diffbot | disallowed | named in the file |
| omgili | Webz.io | disallowed | named in the file |
| Timpibot | Timpi | not disallowed | covered by the default rule |
Search and citation crawlers
These feed AI answer engines that cite and link their sources. Disallowing them can take a site out of AI answers and out of the referral traffic that comes with them.
| Crawler | Operator | Status | How the file treats it |
|---|---|---|---|
| OAI-SearchBot | OpenAI | not disallowed | named in the file |
| PerplexityBot | Perplexity | not disallowed | named in the file |
| Claude-SearchBot | Anthropic | not disallowed | named in the file |
| DuckAssistBot | DuckDuckGo | not disallowed | covered by the default rule |
User-action fetchers
These fetch a page live when a person asks an assistant about it. Disallowing them stops the assistant reading the page for that person.
| Crawler | Operator | Status | How the file treats it |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT-User | OpenAI | not disallowed | named in the file |
| Perplexity-User | Perplexity | not disallowed | named in the file |
| Claude-User | Anthropic | not disallowed | named in the file |
| meta-externalfetcher | Meta | not disallowed | named in the file |
Classic search crawlers
Classic search crawlers, shown as the baseline.
| Crawler | Operator | Status | How the file treats it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Googlebot | not disallowed | covered by the default rule | |
| Bingbot | Microsoft | not disallowed | covered by the default rule |
How crunchbase.com compares
Among 766 readable sites in the Top 1,000, 21.8% disallow GPTBot, 22.1% ClaudeBot, 11.6% OAI-SearchBot and 17.9% PerplexityBot. Among 32,014 readable .com sites: 12.5% disallow GPTBot, 10.6% ClaudeBot.
History
First read 2026-10-10; the file has not changed since. Read the file itself.
The AI-related lines in the file
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot User-agent: ChatGPT-User User-agent: Claude-SearchBot User-agent: Claude-User User-agent: PerplexityBot User-agent: Perplexity-User User-agent: Meta-ExternalFetcher # Note: Applebot (Siri/Spotlight) & bingbot (Copilot) are search engines already User-agent: GPTBot User-agent: Google-Extended User-agent: ClaudeBot User-agent: anthropic-ai User-agent: cohere-ai User-agent: CCBot User-agent: AI2Bot User-agent: Meta-ExternalAgent User-agent: Applebot-Extended User-agent: Bytespider User-agent: Diffbot User-agent: Omgilibot User-agent: Omgili
Check it live. This page shows the file as read on 2026-10-10. Run a live check of crunchbase.com and get told when it changes, or get the dataset for a segment.