Can AI read your site?
Each AI crawler, by who runs it
For the home page. A crawler reads by the group that names it, else by *.
OpenAI
chatgpt-user · Disallow: /OpenAI: as someone asked for it, “robots.txt rules may not apply”.Anthropic
Perplexity
Mistral AI
Meta
Amazon
ByteDance
Common Crawl
Cohere
DuckDuckGo
You.com
google-extended · Disallow: /Crawls nothing itself: says whether what Googlebot reads may be used for training future Gemini models, and grounding in Gemini.Apple
applebot-extended · Disallow: /Crawls nothing itself: says whether what Applebot reads may be used for training Apple's foundation models for its generative AI features.What robots.txt says
# New York Times content is made available for your personal, non-commercial # use subject to our Terms of Service here: # https://help.nytimes.com/hc/en-us/articles/115014893428-Terms-of-Service. # Use of any device, tool, or process designed to data mine or scrape the content # using automated means is prohibited without prior written permission from # The New York Times Company. Prohibited uses include but are not limited to: # (1) text and data mining activities under Art. 4 of the EU Directive on Copyright in # the Digital Single Market; # (2) the development of any software, machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI), # and/or large language models (LLMs); # (3) creating or providing archived or cached data sets containing our content to others; and/or # (4) any commercial purposes. # Contact https://nytlicensing.com/contact/ for assistance. User-agent: * User-agent: Googlebot Disallow: /ads/ Disallow: /adx/bin/ Disallow: /athletic/wp/wp-admin/ Allow: /athletic/wp/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php Disallow: /athletic/async-* Disallow: /athletic/search/* Allow: /athletic/search/$ Disallow: /athletic/checkout/ Disallow: /athletic/checkout?plan_id* Allow: /athletic/checkout/$ Disallow: /athletic/checkout2* Disallow: /athletic/login/ Disallow: /athletic/login?login_source* Disallow: /athletic/login?ref_page* Allow: /athletic/login/$ Disallow: /athletic/login2/ Disallow: /athletic/login2?login_source* Disallow: /athletic/login2?ref_page* Allow: /athletic/login2/$ Disallow: /athletic/report/ Disallow: /athletic/*/discuss/* Allow: /athletic/live-blogs/discuss/ Allow: /athletic/nfl/game/discuss/ Disallow: /athletic/register/ Disallow: /athletic/register?welcome_redirect* Disallow: /athletic/register2/ Disallow: /athletic/register2?welcome_redirect* Disallow: /athletic/betmgm-redirect* Disallow: /athletic/cdn-cgi/ Disallow: /athletic/verizon/* Disallow: /athletic/forgot-password/* Disallow: /athletic/forgot-password2/* Disallow: /athletic/amp-social-login* Disallow: /athletic/track-analytics/ Disallow: /athletic/amp-auth/ Disallow: /athletic/rss-feed/ Disallow: /athletic/*?*rss=1 Disallow: /athletic/global-color-test.php Disallow: /athletic/global-font-test.php Disallow: /athletic/graphql* Disallow: /athletic/api* Disallow: /athletic/ip* Disallow: /athletic/call-set-cookie-with-context/* Disallow: /athletic/get-current-user/ Disallow: /athletic/pv.json Disallow: /athletic/following-feed-test/* Disallow: /athletic*/boxscore/* Disallow: /athletic/feed-test/ Disallow: /athletic*/signed-mp3-redirect-url/* Disallow: /athletic/embedded-interactive/* Disallow: /card/panel/ Disallow: /panel/ Disallow: /puzzles/leaderboards/invite/* Disallow: /svc Allow: /svc/crosswords Allow: /svc/games Allow: /svc/letter-boxed Allow: /svc/spelling-bee Allow: /svc/wordle Allow: /svc/connections Allow: /svc/sudoku Allow: /svc/strands Allow: /svc/pips Disallow: /video/embedded/* Disallow: /search Disallow: /multiproduct/ Disallow: /hd/ Disallow: /inyt/ Disallow: /*?*query= Disallow: /*.pdf$ Disallow: /*?*login= Disallow: /*?*campaignId= Disallow: /*?*mcubz= Disallow: /*?*smprod= Disallow: /*?*ProfileID= Disallow: /*?*ListingID= Disallow: /*?*campaign_id= Disallow: /*?*hybrid= Disallow: /*?*entry= Disallow: /*?*embed= Disallow: /*?ls= Disallow: /*?*&ls= Disallow: /v1/initialize* Disallow: /v1/rgstr* Disallow: /wirecutter/wp-admin/ Disallow: /wirecutter/*.zip$ Disallow: /wirecutter/*.csv$ Disallow: /wirecutter/deals/beta Disallow: /wirecutter/data-requests Disallow: /wirecutter/search Disallow: /wirecutter/*?s= Disallow: /wirecutter/*&xid= Disallow: /wirecutter/*?q= Disallow: /wirecutter/*?l= Disallow: /wirecutter/*?merchant= Disallow: /wirecutter/out/ Disallow: /search Disallow: /subscription/*?*source= Disallow: /subscription/*?*onboarded= Disallow: /*?*smid= Disallow: /*?*partner= Disallow: /*?*utm_source= Allow: /wirecutter/*?*utm_source= Allow: /ads/public/ Allow: /svc/news/v3/all/pshb.rss Allow: /wirecutter/reviews/*?*utm_source= Allow: /wirecutter/blog/*?
Not every crawler keeps robots.txt. On your own site, tidekeeper sees who read what anyway.
To keep the AI trainers out
# Training only: search and assistants still read User-agent: GPTBot User-agent: ClaudeBot User-agent: MistralAI-Training User-agent: Meta-ExternalAgent User-agent: Amazonbot User-agent: Bytespider User-agent: CCBot User-agent: cohere-ai User-agent: Google-Extended User-agent: Applebot-Extended Disallow: /
Lines for the crawlers that read for training, as tidekeeper knows them. Search engines and the assistants that read for someone, now, are left as they are.
The page, as a crawler that runs no script gets it
- Title
- The New York Times - Breaking News, US News, World News and Videos
- First heading
- New York Times - Top Stories
- Description
- Live news, investigations, opinion, photos and video by the journalists of The New York Times from more than 150 countries around the world. Subscribe for coverage of U.S. and international news, politics, business, technology, science, health, arts, sports and more.
- The first words
- New York Times - Top Stories Live LIVE Midterm Elections Nov. 6, 2026, 7:07 p.m. ET White House Shake-Up Nov. 6, 2026, 6:53 p.m. ET Top Stories LIVE Nov. 6, 2026, 6:53 p.m. ET Trump Elevates Stephen Miller, a Fiery
Then, which of them actually came
robots.txt says who may read. tidekeeper's Bots and AI says who did: each crawler by name, the pages it read, whether its address was its owner's, and the readers each assistant sent after.
Bots and AI crawlers →How it works
- Give a domainIts robots.txt, its llms.txt and the page are fetched once.
- See each crawlerBy company: let in or kept out, and by which rule.
- Keep out what you chooseCopy the lines that keep the crawlers that train out, and leave search and assistants be.
Questions
How do I block GPTBot?
Put “User-agent: GPTBot” and “Disallow: /” in your robots.txt. OpenAI's search reads as OAI-SearchBot, by its own name, so ChatGPT can still find your pages.
What is Google-Extended?
A name in robots.txt, not a crawler: Googlebot does the reading, and Google-Extended says whether what it reads may be used for Gemini and Vertex AI.
Does blocking AI crawlers change my Google ranking?
Keeping Google-Extended out does not change Google Search, Google says: Googlebot reads for search under its own name.
What is llms.txt?
A Markdown file at /llms.txt that says what a site is and where its pages are as text, for AI agents. It is a proposal, read by some agents.
Do crawlers keep robots.txt?
The ones that say so do; not every crawler does. On your own site, tidekeeper sees which ones came, and what they read.