Who blocks AI · #588 in the Majestic Million

robots.txt · checked 9 Nov 2026

Does barnesandnoble.com block AI crawlers?

No. barnesandnoble.com’s robots.txt lets all 19 AI crawlers we track crawl the site. Search engines such as Googlebot and Bingbot may crawl it.

GPTBotAllowed OAI-SearchBotAllowed ClaudeBotAllowed PerplexityBotAllowed Google-ExtendedAllowed CCBotAllowed

robots.txt: www.barnesandnoble.com/robots.txt · 168 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	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`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	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`CCBot`	Common Crawl	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`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	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	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	Partly blocked	line 90 · `Disallow: /admin` line 91 · `Disallow: /cart` and 32 more
`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.barnesandnoble.com/robots.txt · 168 lines

1User-agent: *

2Disallow: /admin

3Disallow: /cart

4Disallow: /orders

5Disallow: /checkouts/

6Disallow: /checkout

7Disallow: /67454337265/checkouts

8Disallow: /67454337265/orders

9Disallow: /carts

10Disallow: /account

11Disallow: /collections/*sort_by*

12Disallow: /*/collections/*sort_by*

13Disallow: /collections/*+*

14Disallow: /collections/*%2B*

15Disallow: /collections/*%2b*

16Disallow: /*/collections/*+*

17Disallow: /*/collections/*%2B*

18Disallow: /*/collections/*%2b*

19Disallow: */collections/*filter*&*filter*

20Disallow: /blogs/*+*

21Disallow: /blogs/*%2B*

22Disallow: /blogs/*%2b*

23Disallow: /*/blogs/*+*

24Disallow: /*/blogs/*%2B*

25Disallow: /*/blogs/*%2b*

26Disallow: /*?*oseid=*

27Disallow: /*preview_theme_id*

28Disallow: /*preview_script_id*

29Disallow: /policies/

30Disallow: /*/*?*ls=*&ls=*

31Disallow: /*/*?*ls%3D*%3Fls%3D*

32Disallow: /*/*?*ls%3d*%3fls%3d*

33Disallow: /search

34Disallow: /apple-app-site-association

35Disallow: /.well-known/shopify/monorail

36Sitemap: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/sitemap.xml

38# Google adsbot ignores robots.txt unless specifically named!

39User-agent: adsbot-google

40Disallow: /checkouts/

41Disallow: /checkout

42Disallow: /carts

43Disallow: /search

44Disallow: /orders

45Disallow: /67454337265/checkouts

46Disallow: /67454337265/orders

47Disallow: /*?*oseid=*

48Disallow: /*preview_theme_id*

49Disallow: /*preview_script_id*

51User-agent: AccessibleWebBot

52Disallow: /admin

53Disallow: /orders

54Disallow: /checkouts/

55Disallow: /checkout

56Disallow: /67454337265/checkouts

57Disallow: /67454337265/orders

58Disallow: /account

59Disallow: /collections/*sort_by*

60Disallow: /*/collections/*sort_by*

61Disallow: /collections/*+*

62Disallow: /collections/*%2B*

63Disallow: /collections/*%2b*

64Disallow: /*/collections/*+*

65Disallow: /*/collections/*%2B*

66Disallow: /*/collections/*%2b*

67Disallow: */collections/*filter*&*filter*

68Disallow: /blogs/*+*

69Disallow: /blogs/*%2B*

70Disallow: /blogs/*%2b*

71Disallow: /*/blogs/*+*

72Disallow: /*/blogs/*%2B*

73Disallow: /*/blogs/*%2b*

74Disallow: /*?*oseid=*

75Disallow: /*preview_theme_id*

76Disallow: /*preview_script_id*

77Disallow: /policies/

78Disallow: /*/*?*ls=*&ls=*

79Disallow: /*/*?*ls%3D*%3Fls%3D*

80Disallow: /*/*?*ls%3d*%3fls%3d*

81Disallow: /apple-app-site-association

82Disallow: /.well-known/shopify/monorail

83Sitemap: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/sitemap.xml

85User-agent: Nutch

86Disallow: /

88User-agent: AhrefsBot

89Crawl-delay: 10

90Disallow: /admin

91Disallow: /cart

92Disallow: /orders

93Disallow: /checkouts/

94Disallow: /checkout

95Disallow: /67454337265/checkouts

96Disallow: /67454337265/orders

97Disallow: /carts

98Disallow: /account

99Disallow: /collections/*sort_by*

100Disallow: /*/collections/*sort_by*

101Disallow: /collections/*+*

102Disallow: /collections/*%2B*

103Disallow: /collections/*%2b*

104Disallow: /*/collections/*+*

105Disallow: /*/collections/*%2B*

106Disallow: /*/collections/*%2b*

107Disallow: */collections/*filter*&*filter*

108Disallow: /blogs/*+*

109Disallow: /blogs/*%2B*

110Disallow: /blogs/*%2b*

111Disallow: /*/blogs/*+*

112Disallow: /*/blogs/*%2B*

113Disallow: /*/blogs/*%2b*

114Disallow: /*?*oseid=*

115Disallow: /*preview_theme_id*

116Disallow: /*preview_script_id*

117Disallow: /policies/

118Disallow: /*/*?*ls=*&ls=*

119Disallow: /*/*?*ls%3D*%3Fls%3D*

120Disallow: /*/*?*ls%3d*%3fls%3d*

121Disallow: /search

122Disallow: /apple-app-site-association

123Disallow: /.well-known/shopify/monorail

124Sitemap: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/sitemap.xml

125

126User-agent: AhrefsSiteAudit

127Crawl-delay: 10

128Disallow: /admin

129Disallow: /cart

130Disallow: /orders

131Disallow: /checkouts/

132Disallow: /checkout

133Disallow: /67454337265/checkouts

134Disallow: /67454337265/orders

135Disallow: /carts

136Disallow: /account

137Disallow: /collections/*sort_by*

138Disallow: /*/collections/*sort_by*

139Disallow: /collections/*+*

140Disallow: /collections/*%2B*

141Disallow: /collections/*%2b*

142Disallow: /*/collections/*+*

143Disallow: /*/collections/*%2B*

144Disallow: /*/collections/*%2b*

145Disallow: */collections/*filter*&*filter*

146Disallow: /blogs/*+*

147Disallow: /blogs/*%2B*

148Disallow: /blogs/*%2b*

149Disallow: /*/blogs/*+*

150Disallow: /*/blogs/*%2B*

151Disallow: /*/blogs/*%2b*

152Disallow: /*?*oseid=*

153Disallow: /*preview_theme_id*

154Disallow: /*preview_script_id*

155Disallow: /policies/

156Disallow: /*/*?*ls=*&ls=*

157Disallow: /*/*?*ls%3D*%3Fls%3D*

158Disallow: /*/*?*ls%3d*%3fls%3d*

159Disallow: /search

160Disallow: /apple-app-site-association

161Disallow: /.well-known/shopify/monorail

162Sitemap: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/sitemap.xml

163

164User-agent: MJ12bot

165Crawl-Delay: 10

166

167User-agent: Pinterest

168Crawl-delay: 1

What do the bots actually get?

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

History

19 October 2026: first checked.

Questions

Does barnesandnoble.com block GPTBot?

No. barnesandnoble.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 barnesandnoble.com block ClaudeBot?

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

Does barnesandnoble.com block Google-Extended?

No. barnesandnoble.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 barnesandnoble.com block PerplexityBot?

No. barnesandnoble.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 barnesandnoble.com?

Yes. barnesandnoble.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.