Who blocks AI · #1086 in the Majestic Million

robots.txt · checked 9 Nov 2026

Does bostonglobe.com block AI crawlers?

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

GPTBotBlocked OAI-SearchBotAllowed ClaudeBotBlocked PerplexityBotAllowed Google-ExtendedBlocked CCBotBlocked

robots.txt: www.bostonglobe.com/robots.txt · 85 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 group applies
`Bingbot`	Microsoft	Allowed	no group applies
`DuckDuckBot`	DuckDuckGo	Allowed	no group applies
`Applebot`	Apple	Allowed	no group applies
`PetalBot`	Huawei	Allowed	no group applies
`YandexBot`	Yandex	Allowed	no group applies
`Baiduspider`	Baidu	Allowed	no group applies

AI search

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`OAI-SearchBot`	OpenAI	Allowed	no group applies
`PerplexityBot`	Perplexity	Allowed	no group applies
`Claude-SearchBot`	Anthropic	Allowed	no group applies
`DuckAssistBot`	DuckDuckGo	Allowed	no group applies
`Amazonbot`	Amazon	Blocked	line 18 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Amazonbot`
`YouBot`	You.com	Allowed	no group applies

AI training

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`GPTBot`	OpenAI	Blocked	line 63 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: GPTBot`
`ClaudeBot`	Anthropic	Blocked	line 39 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: ClaudeBot`
`Google-Extended`	Google	Blocked	line 57 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Google-Extended`
`CCBot`	Common Crawl	Blocked	line 36 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: CCBot`
`Applebot-Extended`	Apple	Blocked	line 30 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Applebot-Extended`
`GoogleOther`	Google	Blocked	line 60 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: GoogleOther`
`Meta-ExternalAgent`	Meta	Blocked	line 69 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: meta-externalagent`
`Bytespider`	ByteDance	Blocked	line 33 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Bytespider`

User-triggered fetchers

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`ChatGPT-User`	OpenAI	Allowed	no group applies
`Claude-User`	Anthropic	Allowed	no group applies
`Perplexity-User`	Perplexity	Allowed	no group applies
`MistralAI-User`	Mistral	Allowed	no group applies
`Meta-ExternalFetcher`	Meta	Allowed	no group applies

SEO tools

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`AhrefsBot`	Ahrefs	Allowed	no group applies
`SemrushBot`	Semrush	Allowed	no group applies
`MJ12bot`	Majestic	Allowed	no group applies
`DotBot`	Moz	Allowed	no group applies

View www.bostonglobe.com/robots.txt · 85 lines

1# Robots.txt for www.bostonglobe.com

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

4# Sitemaps

5Sitemap: https://www.bostonglobe.com/arc/outboundfeeds/news-sitemap/?outputType=xml

6Sitemap: https://www.bostonglobe.com/arc/outboundfeeds/sitemap-index-by-day/?outputType=xml

7Sitemap: https://www.bostonglobe.com/arc/outboundfeeds/video-sitemap-index/?outputType=xml

9# Allow

10User-agent: AmazonAdBot

11Allow: /

13# AI Bots

14User-agent: AI2Bot-Dolma

15Disallow: /

17User-agent: Amazonbot

18Disallow: /

20User-agent: anthropic-ai

21Disallow: /

23User-agent: ApifyBot

24Disallow: /

26User-agent: ApifyWebsiteContentCrawler

27Disallow: /

29User-agent: Applebot-Extended

30Disallow: /

32User-agent: Bytespider

33Disallow: /

35User-agent: CCBot

36Disallow: /

38User-agent: ClaudeBot

39Disallow: /

41User-agent: cohere-ai

42Disallow: /

44User-agent: cohere-training-data-crawler

45Disallow: /

47User-agent: Diffbot

48Disallow: /

50User-agent: FacebookBot

51Disallow: /

53User-agent: FirecrawlAgent

54Disallow: /

56User-agent: Google-Extended

57Disallow: /

59User-agent: GoogleOther

60Disallow: /

62User-agent: GPTBot

63Disallow: /

65User-agent: imageSpider

66Disallow: /

68User-agent: meta-externalagent

69Disallow: /

71User-agent: omgili

72Disallow: /

74User-agent: PanguBot

75Disallow: /

77User-agent: Spider

78Disallow: /

80User-agent: Timpibot

81Disallow: /

83User-agent: Webzio-Extended

84Disallow: /

What do the bots actually get?

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

History

19 October 2026: first checked.

Questions

Does bostonglobe.com block GPTBot?

Yes. bostonglobe.com’s robots.txt disallows GPTBot from the whole site (line 63: 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 bostonglobe.com block ClaudeBot?

Yes. bostonglobe.com’s robots.txt disallows ClaudeBot from the whole site (line 39: Disallow: /). ClaudeBot is Anthropic’s crawler for training data. Checked 9 November 2026.

Does bostonglobe.com block Google-Extended?

Yes. bostonglobe.com’s robots.txt disallows Google-Extended from the whole site (line 57: 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 bostonglobe.com block PerplexityBot?

No. bostonglobe.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 bostonglobe.com?

Yes. bostonglobe.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.