Who blocks AI · #294 in the Majestic Million

robots.txt · checked 9 Nov 2026

Does apnews.com block AI crawlers?

Yes. apnews.com’s robots.txt blocks 9 of the 19 AI crawlers we track, including GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and 6 more. Search engines such as Googlebot and Bingbot may crawl it.

GPTBotBlocked OAI-SearchBotAllowed ClaudeBotBlocked PerplexityBotBlocked Google-ExtendedAllowed CCBotBlocked

robots.txt: apnews.com/robots.txt · 74 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	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`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	Blocked	line 53 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: PerplexityBot`
`Claude-SearchBot`	Anthropic	Blocked	line 74 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Claude-SearchBot`
`DuckAssistBot`	DuckDuckGo	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`Amazonbot`	Amazon	Blocked	line 59 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Amazonbot`
`YouBot`	You.com	Allowed	no rule matches the home page

AI training

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`GPTBot`	OpenAI	Blocked	line 38 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: GPTBot`
`ClaudeBot`	Anthropic	Blocked	line 44 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: ClaudeBot`
`Google-Extended`	Google	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`CCBot`	Common Crawl	Blocked	line 35 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: CCBot`
`Applebot-Extended`	Apple	Blocked	line 62 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Applebot-Extended`
`GoogleOther`	Google	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`Meta-ExternalAgent`	Meta	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`Bytespider`	ByteDance	Allowed	no rule matches the home page

User-triggered fetchers

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`ChatGPT-User`	OpenAI	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`Claude-User`	Anthropic	Blocked	line 71 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Claude-User`
`Perplexity-User`	Perplexity	Blocked	line 56 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Perplexity-User`
`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 apnews.com/robots.txt · 74 lines

1User-Agent: *

2Disallow: *_ptid=*

3Disallow: *?prx_t=*

4Disallow: /zephr*

5Disallow: /blaize*

6Disallow: /search?q=*

7Disallow: /*.rss

8Disallow: /buyline-shopping/*

9Disallow: /buyline-personal-finance/*

10Disallow: *?jw_start

11Disallow: *&jw_start

12Disallow: /gallery/

13Disallow: /config/newrelic/prod

14Disallow: /parsely-api-endpoint

15Disallow: /apdata/

16Disallow: /article/border-immigration-election-2182fec11fa008ec96c4202e5656d19e

17Disallow: /api/v2/feed/

18Disallow: /press-release/*

19Disallow: /*/widgets/

20Disallow: /*/widget/

21Disallow: /scripts/CustomNews.js

23# Monitoring Test

25Sitemap: https://apnews.com/ap-sitemap.xml

26Sitemap: https://apnews.com/news-sitemap-content.xml

27Sitemap: https://apnews.com/hubs-sitemap-content.xml

28Sitemap: https://apnews.com/video-sitemap.xml

29Sitemap: https://apnews.com/author-sitemap-content.xml

30Sitemap: https://apnews.com/projects/elections-2026/sitemap-index.xml

32# Disallow Rules

34User-agent: CCBot

35Disallow: /

37User-agent: GPTBot

38Disallow: /

40User-agent: anthropic-ai

41Disallow: /

43User-agent: ClaudeBot

44Disallow: /

46User-agent: Claude-Web

47Disallow: /

49User-agent: cohere-ai

50Disallow: /

52User-agent: PerplexityBot

53Disallow: /

55User-agent: Perplexity-User

56Disallow: /

58User-agent: Amazonbot

59Disallow: /

61User-agent: Applebot-Extended

62Disallow: /

64User-agent: Bytedance

65Disallow: /

67User-agent: Timpibot

68Disallow: /

70User-agent: Claude-User

71Disallow: /

73User-agent: Claude-SearchBot

74Disallow: /

What do the bots actually get?

This page reads robots.txt, which states what apnews.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 apnews.com Test a path in the robots.txt tester

History

19 October 2026: first checked.
9 November 2026: started blocking Perplexity-User.

Questions

Does apnews.com block GPTBot?

Yes. apnews.com’s robots.txt disallows GPTBot from the whole site (line 38: 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 apnews.com block ClaudeBot?

Yes. apnews.com’s robots.txt disallows ClaudeBot from the whole site (line 44: Disallow: /). ClaudeBot is Anthropic’s crawler for training data. Checked 9 November 2026.

Does apnews.com block Google-Extended?

No. apnews.com’s robots.txt lets Google-Extended crawl the site. 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 apnews.com block PerplexityBot?

Yes. apnews.com’s robots.txt disallows PerplexityBot from the whole site (line 53: Disallow: /). PerplexityBot is the crawler that indexes pages for Perplexity’s answers. Checked 9 November 2026.

Can ChatGPT search find apnews.com?

Yes. apnews.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.