Who blocks AI · #235 in the Majestic Million

robots.txt · checked 9 Nov 2026

Does britannica.com block AI crawlers?

No. britannica.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.britannica.com/robots.txt · 49 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	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.britannica.com/robots.txt · 49 lines

1# /robots.txt file for encyclopaedia britannica

3Sitemap: https://www.britannica.com/bps-ssl-gsm-index.xml

5User-agent: *

6Disallow: /search

7Disallow: /cdn-cgi/

9User-agent: Mediapartners-Google

10Allow: /

11User-agent: AdsBot-Google

12Allow: /

13User-agent: AmazonAdBot

14Allow: /

15User-agent: Bidswitchbot

16Allow: /

17User-agent: CriteoBot

18Allow: /

19User-agent: DoubleVerifyBot

20Allow: /

21User-agent: DVBot

22Allow: /

23User-agent: Grapeshot

24Allow: /

25User-agent: Gumgum

26Allow: /

27User-agent: IAS_admantx

28Allow: /

29User-agent: IAS_crawler

30Allow: /

31User-agent: IAS_wombles

32Allow: /

33User-agent: Leikibot

34Allow: /

35User-agent: Opebot-v

36Allow: /

37User-agent: Peer39_crawler

38Allow: /

39User-agent: Proximic

40Allow: /

41User-agent: PubMatic Crawler Bot

42Allow: /

43User-agent: SinceraSyntheticUser

44Allow: /

45User-agent: SlickBot

46Allow: /

47User-agent: TTD-Content

48Allow: /

What do the bots actually get?

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

History

19 October 2026: first checked.

Questions

Does britannica.com block GPTBot?

No. britannica.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 britannica.com block ClaudeBot?

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

Does britannica.com block Google-Extended?

No. britannica.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 britannica.com block PerplexityBot?

No. britannica.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 britannica.com?

Yes. britannica.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.