Does ca.gov block AI crawlers?

No. ca.gov’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.ca.gov/robots.txt · 15 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	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`Bingbot`	Microsoft	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`DuckDuckBot`	DuckDuckGo	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`Applebot`	Apple	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`PetalBot`	Huawei	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`YandexBot`	Yandex	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`Baiduspider`	Baidu	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`

AI search

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`OAI-SearchBot`	OpenAI	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`PerplexityBot`	Perplexity	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`Claude-SearchBot`	Anthropic	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`DuckAssistBot`	DuckDuckGo	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`Amazonbot`	Amazon	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`YouBot`	You.com	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`

AI training

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`GPTBot`	OpenAI	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`ClaudeBot`	Anthropic	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`Google-Extended`	Google	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`CCBot`	Common Crawl	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`Applebot-Extended`	Apple	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`GoogleOther`	Google	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`Meta-ExternalAgent`	Meta	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`Bytespider`	ByteDance	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`

User-triggered fetchers

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`ChatGPT-User`	OpenAI	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`Claude-User`	Anthropic	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`Perplexity-User`	Perplexity	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`MistralAI-User`	Mistral	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`Meta-ExternalFetcher`	Meta	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`

SEO tools

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`AhrefsBot`	Ahrefs	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`SemrushBot`	Semrush	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`MJ12bot`	Majestic	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`DotBot`	Moz	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`

View www.ca.gov/robots.txt · 15 lines

1User-agent: *

2Allow: /

4# Recommended for all sites

5Disallow: /ads.txt

6Disallow: /app-ads.txt

7Disallow: /.well-known/assetlinks.json

8Disallow: /.well-known/apple-app-site-association

9Disallow: /apple-app-site-association

11# www.ca.gov specificly, reduces 404 crawl attempts

12Disallow: /state/portal/

13Disallow: /state/govsite/

15Sitemap: https://www.ca.gov/sitemaps/sitemapindex.xml

What do the bots actually get?

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

History

19 October 2026: first checked.

Questions

Does ca.gov block GPTBot?

No. ca.gov’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 ca.gov block ClaudeBot?

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

Does ca.gov block Google-Extended?

No. ca.gov’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 ca.gov block PerplexityBot?

No. ca.gov’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 ca.gov?

Yes. ca.gov’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.