AI Crawler Atlas / domains
thephinsider.com: AI crawler policy in robots.txt
robots.txt as fetched on 2026-10-10: thephinsider.com disallows 17 of 22 AI and search crawlers from the site root: ClaudeBot, Google-Extended, CCBot, meta-externalagent, Bytespider, Applebot-Extended, cohere-ai, Diffbot, omgili, Timpibot, PerplexityBot, Claude-SearchBot, DuckAssistBot, ChatGPT-User, Perplexity-User, Claude-User, meta-externalfetcher. That includes crawlers behind AI answers (PerplexityBot, Claude-SearchBot, DuckAssistBot, ChatGPT-User, Perplexity-User, Claude-User, meta-externalfetcher).
The file refuses training crawlers and also some crawlers that power AI answers, so the site is likely to be missing from AI citations and the referral traffic that follows.
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 | not 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 | named in the file |
| 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 | disallowed | named in the file |
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 | covered by the default rule |
| PerplexityBot | Perplexity | disallowed | named in the file |
| Claude-SearchBot | Anthropic | disallowed | named in the file |
| DuckAssistBot | DuckDuckGo | disallowed | named in the file |
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 | disallowed | named in the file |
| Perplexity-User | Perplexity | disallowed | named in the file |
| Claude-User | Anthropic | disallowed | named in the file |
| meta-externalfetcher | Meta | 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 thephinsider.com compares
Among 65,831 readable sites in the Top 100,000, 12.9% disallow GPTBot, 10.8% ClaudeBot, 6.0% OAI-SearchBot and 7.9% 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: Amazonbot User-agent: GPTBot User-agent: AI2Bot User-agent: AI2Bot-DeepResearchEval User-agent: Ai2Bot-Dolma User-agent: anthropic-ai User-agent: Applebot-Extended User-agent: Bytespider User-agent: CCBot User-agent: ChatGPT-User User-agent: Claude-SearchBot User-agent: Claude-User User-agent: ClaudeBot User-agent: cohere-ai User-agent: Diffbot User-agent: DuckAssistBot User-agent: Google-Extended User-agent: meta-externalagent User-agent: meta-externalfetcher User-agent: omgili User-agent: Omgilibot User-agent: Perplexity-User User-agent: PerplexityBot User-agent: PetalBot User-agent: Timpibot User-agent: YouBot User-agent: Goo
Check it live. This page shows the file as read on 2026-10-10. Run a live check of thephinsider.com and get told when it changes, or get the dataset for a segment.