Who blocks AI · #659 in the Majestic Million

robots.txt · checked 9 Nov 2026

Does axios.com block AI crawlers?

Yes. axios.com’s robots.txt blocks 3 of the 19 AI crawlers we track, including CCBot, Bytespider and Amazonbot. Search engines such as Googlebot and Bingbot may crawl it.

GPTBotAllowed OAI-SearchBotAllowed ClaudeBotAllowed PerplexityBotAllowed Google-ExtendedPartly blocked CCBotBlocked

robots.txt: www.axios.com/robots.txt · 51 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	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`Claude-SearchBot`	Anthropic	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`DuckAssistBot`	DuckDuckGo	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`Amazonbot`	Amazon	Blocked	line 44 · `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	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`ClaudeBot`	Anthropic	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`Google-Extended`	Google	Partly blocked	line 10 · `Disallow: /core/*` line 11 · `Disallow: /admin/` and 3 more
`CCBot`	Common Crawl	Blocked	line 26 · `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 29 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Bytespider`

User-triggered fetchers

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`ChatGPT-User`	OpenAI	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`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.axios.com/robots.txt · 51 lines

2# Disallow Rules

4User-agent: Twitterbot/*

5Disallow:

6Crawl-delay: 1

8User-agent: Google-Extended

9Allow: /

10Disallow: /core/*

11Disallow: /admin/

12Disallow: /login/

13Disallow: /sso/

14Disallow: /api/

16User-agent: *

17Disallow: /core/*

18Disallow: /admin/

19Disallow: /login/

20Disallow: /sso/

21Disallow: /api/

23# Disallow Rules (bot-specific)

25User-agent: CCBot

26Disallow: /

28User-agent: Bytespider

29Disallow: /

31User-agent: Diffbot

32Disallow: /

34User-agent: FacebookBot

35Disallow: /

37User-agent: ImagesiftBot

38Disallow: /

40User-agent: Scrapy

41Disallow: /

43User-agent: Amazonbot

44Disallow: /

46# Sitemaps

48Sitemap: https://www.axios.com/sitemap.xml

50# 8fkux4mqab196bbs

What do the bots actually get?

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

History

19 October 2026: first checked.

Questions

Does axios.com block GPTBot?

No. axios.com’s robots.txt lets GPTBot crawl the site. GPTBot is OpenAI’s crawler for training data; blocking it doesn’t affect ChatGPT search, which uses OAI-SearchBot. Checked 9 November 2026.

Does axios.com block ClaudeBot?

No. axios.com’s robots.txt lets ClaudeBot crawl the site. ClaudeBot is Anthropic’s crawler for training data. Checked 9 November 2026.

Does axios.com block Google-Extended?

Partly. axios.com’s robots.txt keeps Google-Extended out of some paths, such as /core/*, and lets it crawl the rest. 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 axios.com block PerplexityBot?

No. axios.com’s robots.txt lets PerplexityBot crawl the site. PerplexityBot is the crawler that indexes pages for Perplexity’s answers. Checked 9 November 2026.

Can ChatGPT search find axios.com?

Yes. axios.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.