Who blocks AI · #326 in the Majestic Million

robots.txt · checked 9 Nov 2026

Does aol.com block AI crawlers?

Yes. aol.com’s robots.txt blocks 6 of the 19 AI crawlers we track, including GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended and 3 more. It also blocks PetalBot among search engines.

GPTBotBlocked OAI-SearchBotAllowed ClaudeBotBlocked PerplexityBotPartly blocked Google-ExtendedBlocked CCBotBlocked

robots.txt: www.aol.com/robots.txt · 144 lines
llms.txt: none
Checked: 9 November 2026, as canaicrawl. We check again every week.

Every bot, and the line that decides

Search engines

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`Googlebot`	Google	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`Bingbot`	Microsoft	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`DuckDuckBot`	DuckDuckGo	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`Applebot`	Apple	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`PetalBot`	Huawei	Blocked	line 121 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: PetalBot`
`YandexBot`	Yandex	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`Baiduspider`	Baidu	Allowed	no rule matches the home page

AI search

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`OAI-SearchBot`	OpenAI	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`PerplexityBot`	Perplexity	Partly blocked	line 103 · `Disallow: /forward` line 104 · `Disallow: /traffic` and 15 more
`Claude-SearchBot`	Anthropic	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`DuckAssistBot`	DuckDuckGo	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`Amazonbot`	Amazon	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`YouBot`	You.com	Blocked	line 137 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: YouBot`

AI training

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`GPTBot`	OpenAI	Blocked	line 74 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: GPTBot`
`ClaudeBot`	Anthropic	Blocked	line 62 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: ClaudeBot`
`Google-Extended`	Google	Blocked	line 72 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Google-Extended`
`CCBot`	Common Crawl	Blocked	line 37 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: CCBot`
`Applebot-Extended`	Apple	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`GoogleOther`	Google	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`Meta-ExternalAgent`	Meta	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`Bytespider`	ByteDance	Blocked	line 35 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Bytespider`

User-triggered fetchers

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`ChatGPT-User`	OpenAI	Partly blocked	line 40 · `Disallow: /forward` line 41 · `Disallow: /traffic` and 15 more
`Claude-User`	Anthropic	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`Perplexity-User`	Perplexity	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`MistralAI-User`	Mistral	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`Meta-ExternalFetcher`	Meta	Allowed	no rule matches the home page

SEO tools

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`AhrefsBot`	Ahrefs	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`SemrushBot`	Semrush	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`MJ12bot`	Majestic	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`DotBot`	Moz	Allowed	no rule matches the home page

View www.aol.com/robots.txt · 144 lines

1User-agent: *

2Allow: /author/

3Disallow: /forward

4Disallow: /traffic

5Disallow: /mm_track

6Disallow: /dl_track

7Disallow: /_uac/adpage.html

8Disallow: /api/

9Disallow: /amp-proxy/

10Disallow: /auth

11Disallow: /login

12Disallow: /logout

13Disallow: /config

14Disallow: /_/authenticate/

15Disallow: /video/play/

16Disallow: /m/

17Disallow: /article/m/

18Disallow: /metrics/pageView

19Disallow: /game/playUpdate

20User-agent: ADmantX

21Disallow: /

22User-agent: AlphaBot

23Disallow: /

24User-agent: anthropic-ai

25Disallow: /

26User-agent: AwarioRssBot

27Disallow: /

28User-agent: AwarioSmartBot

29Disallow: /

30User-agent: BLEXBot

31Disallow: /

32User-agent: Buzzbot

33Disallow: /

34User-agent: Bytespider

35Disallow: /

36User-agent: CCBot

37Disallow: /

38User-agent: ChatGPT-User

39Allow: /

40Disallow: /forward

41Disallow: /traffic

42Disallow: /mm_track

43Disallow: /dl_track

44Disallow: /_uac/adpage.html

45Disallow: /api/

46Disallow: /amp-proxy/

47Disallow: /auth

48Disallow: /login

49Disallow: /logout

50Disallow: /config

51Disallow: /_/authenticate/

52Disallow: /video/play/

53Disallow: /m/

54Disallow: /article/m/

55Disallow: /metrics/pageView

56Disallow: /game/playUpdate

57User-agent: claritybot

58Disallow: /

59User-agent: Claude-Web

60Disallow: /

61User-agent: ClaudeBot

62Disallow: /

63User-agent: cohere-ai

64Disallow: /

65User-agent: Diffbot

66Disallow: /

67User-agent: FacebookBot

68Disallow: /

69User-agent: FriendlyCrawler

70Disallow: /

71User-agent: Google-Extended

72Disallow: /

73User-agent: GPTBot

74Disallow: /

75User-agent: huggingface

76Disallow: /

77User-agent: ImagesiftBot

78Disallow: /

79User-agent: img2dataset

80Disallow: /

81User-agent: magpie-crawler

82Disallow: /

83User-agent: Meltwater

84Disallow: /

85User-agent: Neevabot

86Disallow: /

87User-agent: news-please

88Disallow: /

89User-agent: NewsNow

90Disallow: /

91User-agent: Nutch

92Disallow: /

93User-agent: omgili

94Disallow: /

95User-agent: omgilibot

96Disallow: /

97User-agent: panscient.com

98Disallow: /

99User-agent: Perplexity-ai

100Disallow: /

101User-agent: PerplexityBot

102Allow: /

103Disallow: /forward

104Disallow: /traffic

105Disallow: /mm_track

106Disallow: /dl_track

107Disallow: /_uac/adpage.html

108Disallow: /api/

109Disallow: /amp-proxy/

110Disallow: /auth

111Disallow: /login

112Disallow: /logout

113Disallow: /config

114Disallow: /_/authenticate/

115Disallow: /video/play/

116Disallow: /m/

117Disallow: /article/m/

118Disallow: /metrics/pageView

119Disallow: /game/playUpdate

120User-agent: PetalBot

121Disallow: /

122User-agent: PiplBot

123Disallow: /

124User-agent: scoop.it

125Disallow: /

126User-agent: Scrapy

127Disallow: /

128User-agent: Seekr

129Disallow: /

130User-agent: SentiBot

131Disallow: /

132User-agent: SeznamBot

133Disallow: /

134User-agent: TurnitinBot

135Disallow: /

136User-agent: YouBot

137Disallow: /

138User-agent: ZumBot

139Disallow: /

140Sitemap: https://www.aol.com/products/sitemap.xml

141Sitemap: https://www.aol.com/editorial/experience-manager/us/channel_xml/sitemap.xml

142Sitemap: https://www.aol.com/sitemaps/us/sitemap-index.xml.gz

143Sitemap: https://www.aol.com/sitemaps/us/news-sitemap-index.xml.gz

144

What do the bots actually get?

This page reads robots.txt, which states what aol.com asks of crawlers. A firewall or CDN can still refuse a bot that robots.txt allows. The live check requests the page as each bot and shows the status it gets.

Run a live check on aol.com Test a path in the robots.txt tester

History

19 October 2026: first checked.

Questions

Does aol.com block GPTBot?

Yes. aol.com’s robots.txt disallows GPTBot from the whole site (line 74: Disallow: /). GPTBot is OpenAI’s crawler for training data; blocking it doesn’t affect ChatGPT search, which uses OAI-SearchBot. Checked 9 November 2026.

Does aol.com block ClaudeBot?

Yes. aol.com’s robots.txt disallows ClaudeBot from the whole site (line 62: Disallow: /). ClaudeBot is Anthropic’s crawler for training data. Checked 9 November 2026.

Does aol.com block Google-Extended?

Yes. aol.com’s robots.txt disallows Google-Extended from the whole site (line 72: Disallow: /). Google-Extended is the token that controls whether Google may use pages for Gemini training and grounding; it doesn’t affect Google Search. Checked 9 November 2026.

Does aol.com block PerplexityBot?

Partly. aol.com’s robots.txt keeps PerplexityBot out of some paths, such as /forward, and lets it crawl the rest. PerplexityBot is the crawler that indexes pages for Perplexity’s answers. Checked 9 November 2026.

Can ChatGPT search find aol.com?

Yes. aol.com’s robots.txt lets OAI-SearchBot crawl the site. OAI-SearchBot is the crawler behind ChatGPT search; blocking it keeps the site out of ChatGPT’s search answers. Checked 9 November 2026.