Who blocks AI · #989 in the Majestic Million

robots.txt · checked 9 Nov 2026

Does boston.com block AI crawlers?

Yes. boston.com’s robots.txt blocks 8 of the 19 AI crawlers we track, including GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended and 5 more. Search engines such as Googlebot and Bingbot may crawl it.

GPTBotBlocked OAI-SearchBotAllowed ClaudeBotBlocked PerplexityBotAllowed Google-ExtendedBlocked CCBotBlocked

robots.txt: www.boston.com/robots.txt · 91 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	Blocked	line 70 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: GPTBot`
`ClaudeBot`	Anthropic	Blocked	line 46 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: ClaudeBot`
`Google-Extended`	Google	Blocked	line 64 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Google-Extended`
`CCBot`	Common Crawl	Blocked	line 43 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: CCBot`
`Applebot-Extended`	Apple	Blocked	line 37 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Applebot-Extended`
`GoogleOther`	Google	Blocked	line 67 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: GoogleOther`
`Meta-ExternalAgent`	Meta	Blocked	line 76 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Meta-ExternalAgent`
`Bytespider`	ByteDance	Blocked	line 40 · `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.boston.com/robots.txt · 91 lines

1# Robots.txt for www.boston.com

2# Passionate about publishing and technology? Visit https://www.bostonglobemedia.com/opportunities/

4# Sitemaps

5Sitemap: https://www.boston.com/sitemap_index.xml

7# Disallow

8User-agent: *

9Disallow: *?s=

10Disallow: /listings/*aggregate*

11Disallow: /listings/*freetext*

12Disallow: /listings/*refresh*

13Disallow: /listings/*sortBy*

14Disallow: /wp-admin/

16# Allow

17User-agent: *

18Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php

20User-agent: AmazonAdBot

21Allow: /

23# AI Bots

24User-agent: AI2Bot-Dolma

25Disallow: /

27User-agent: anthropic-ai

28Disallow: /

30User-agent: ApifyBot

31Disallow: /

33User-agent: ApifyWebsiteContentCrawler

34Disallow: /

36User-agent: Applebot-Extended

37Disallow: /

39User-agent: Bytespider

40Disallow: /

42User-agent: CCBot

43Disallow: /

45User-agent: ClaudeBot

46Disallow: /

48User-agent: cohere-ai

49Disallow: /

51User-agent: cohere-training-data-crawler

52Disallow: /

54User-agent: Diffbot

55Disallow: /

57User-agent: FacebookBot

58Disallow: /

60User-agent: FirecrawlAgent

61Disallow: /

63User-agent: Google-Extended

64Disallow: /

66User-agent: GoogleOther

67Disallow: /

69User-agent: GPTBot

70Disallow: /

72User-agent: imageSpider

73Disallow: /

75User-agent: Meta-ExternalAgent

76Disallow: /

78User-agent: omgili

79Disallow: /

81User-agent: PanguBot

82Disallow: /

84User-agent: Spider

85Disallow: /

87User-agent: Timpibot

88Disallow: /

90User-agent: Webzio-Extended

91Disallow: /

What do the bots actually get?

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

History

19 October 2026: first checked.

Questions

Does boston.com block GPTBot?

Yes. boston.com’s robots.txt disallows GPTBot from the whole site (line 70: 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 boston.com block ClaudeBot?

Yes. boston.com’s robots.txt disallows ClaudeBot from the whole site (line 46: Disallow: /). ClaudeBot is Anthropic’s crawler for training data. Checked 9 November 2026.

Does boston.com block Google-Extended?

Yes. boston.com’s robots.txt disallows Google-Extended from the whole site (line 64: 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 boston.com block PerplexityBot?

No. boston.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 boston.com?

Yes. boston.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.