Who blocks AI · #433 in the Majestic Million

robots.txt · checked 9 Nov 2026

Does dw.com block AI crawlers?

Yes. dw.com’s robots.txt blocks 14 of the 19 AI crawlers we track, including GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended and 11 more. It also blocks Applebot and PetalBot among search engines.

GPTBotBlocked OAI-SearchBotBlocked ClaudeBotBlocked PerplexityBotBlocked Google-ExtendedBlocked CCBotBlocked

robots.txt: www.dw.com/robots.txt · 195 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	Partly blocked	line 23 · `Disallow: /?` line 24 · `Disallow: /p/*`
`Bingbot`	Microsoft	Partly blocked	line 23 · `Disallow: /?` line 24 · `Disallow: /p/*`
`DuckDuckBot`	DuckDuckGo	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`Applebot`	Apple	Blocked	line 48 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Applebot`
`PetalBot`	Huawei	Blocked	line 156 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: PetalBot`
`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	Blocked	line 132 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: OAI-SearchBot`
`PerplexityBot`	Perplexity	Blocked	line 147 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: PerplexityBot`
`Claude-SearchBot`	Anthropic	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`DuckAssistBot`	DuckDuckGo	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`Amazonbot`	Amazon	Blocked	line 42 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Amazonbot`
`YouBot`	You.com	Blocked	line 180 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: YouBot`

AI training

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`GPTBot`	OpenAI	Blocked	line 99 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: GPTBot`
`ClaudeBot`	Anthropic	Blocked	line 69 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: ClaudeBot`
`Google-Extended`	Google	Blocked	line 96 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Google-Extended`
`CCBot`	Common Crawl	Blocked	line 63 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: CCBot`
`Applebot-Extended`	Apple	Blocked	line 51 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Applebot-Extended`
`GoogleOther`	Google	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`Meta-ExternalAgent`	Meta	Blocked	line 114 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Meta-ExternalAgent`
`Bytespider`	ByteDance	Blocked	line 60 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Bytespider`

User-triggered fetchers

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`ChatGPT-User`	OpenAI	Blocked	line 66 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: ChatGPT-User`
`Claude-User`	Anthropic	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`Perplexity-User`	Perplexity	Blocked	line 150 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Perplexity-User`
`MistralAI-User`	Mistral	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`Meta-ExternalFetcher`	Meta	Blocked	line 117 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Meta-ExternalFetcher`

SEO tools

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`AhrefsBot`	Ahrefs	Blocked	line 33 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: AhrefsBot`
`SemrushBot`	Semrush	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`MJ12bot`	Majestic	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`DotBot`	Moz	Blocked	line 87 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: dotbot`

View www.dw.com/robots.txt · 195 lines

1User-agent: *

2Disallow: /search/

3Disallow: /*/search/

4Disallow: /overlay/

5Disallow: /popups/mediaplayer/

6Disallow: /popups/popup_gallery/

7Disallow: /*/layoutvorlagen/

8Disallow: /*/user/account$

9Disallow: /*/user/activity$

10Disallow: /*/user/profile$

11Disallow: /*/user/password/change$

12Disallow: /*/user/password/set$

13Disallow: /*/user/feedback/status?type=*

14Disallow: /*/user/register/confirm$

15Disallow: /*/user/email/change$

16Disallow: /popups/

17Disallow: /media/

18Disallow: /static/

19Disallow: /graph-api/

21User-agent: Googlebot

22User-agent: Bingbot

23Disallow: /*?*

24Disallow: /p/*

26# DW content is made available for your personal, non-commercial use. Use of any device,

27# tool, or process designed to data mine or scrape the content using automated means is

28# prohibited without prior written permission from Deutsche Welle.

30# Disallowd Bots

32User-agent: AhrefsBot

33Disallow: /

35User-agent: Ai2Bot

36Disallow: /

38User-agent: Ai2Bot-Dolma

39Disallow: /

41User-agent: Amazonbot

42Disallow: /

44User-agent: anthropic-ai

45Disallow: /

47User-agent: Applebot

48Disallow: /

50User-agent: Applebot-Extended

51Disallow: /

53User-agent: AwarioRssBot

54Disallow: /

56User-agent: AwarioSmartBot

57Disallow: /

59User-agent: Bytespider

60Disallow: /

62User-agent: CCBot

63Disallow: /

65User-agent: ChatGPT-User

66Disallow: /

68User-agent: ClaudeBot

69Disallow: /

71User-agent: Claude-Web

72Disallow: /

74User-agent: cohere-ai

75Disallow: /

77User-agent: Copilot

78Disallow: /

80User-agent: DataForSeoBot

81Disallow: /

83User-agent: Diffbot

84Disallow: /

86User-agent: dotbot

87Disallow: /

89User-agent: FacebookBot

90Disallow: /

92User-agent: FriendlyCrawler

93Disallow: /

95User-agent: Google-Extended

96Disallow: /

98User-agent: GPTBot

99Disallow: /

100

101User-agent: ia_archiver

102Disallow: /

103

104User-Agent: ImagesiftBot

105Disallow: /

106

107User-agent: img2dataset

108Disallow: /

109

110User-agent: magpie-crawler

111Disallow: /

112

113User-agent: Meta-ExternalAgent

114Disallow: /

115

116User-agent: Meta-ExternalFetcher

117Disallow: /

118

119User-agent: NewsNow

120Disallow: /

121

122User-agent: MJ12bot

123Disallow: /

124

125User-agent: MSIExtra

126Disallow: /

127

128User-agent: news-please

129Disallow: /

130

131User-agent: OAI-SearchBot

132Disallow: /

133

134User-agent: omgili

135Disallow: /

136

137User-agent: omgilibot

138Disallow: /

139

140User-agent: peer39_crawler

141Disallow: /

142

143User-agent: peer39_crawler/1.0

144Disallow: /

145

146User-agent: PerplexityBot

147Disallow: /

148

149User-agent: Perplexity-User

150Disallow: /

151

152User-agent: Perplexity-User/1.0

153Disallow: /

154

155User-agent: PetalBot

156Disallow: /

157

158User-agent: Scrapy

159Disallow: /

160

161User-agent: SirdataBot

162Disallow: /

163

164User-agent: Timpibot

165Disallow: /

166

167User-agent: TurnitinBot

168Disallow: /

169

170User-agent: VelenPublicWebCrawler

171Disallow: /

172

173User-agent: Webzio-Extended

174Disallow: /

175

176User-agent: Yeti

177Disallow: /

178

179User-agent: YouBot

180Disallow: /

181

182

183# Other Bot Rules

184

185User-agent: Twitterbot

186Allow: /*?at_*

187

188# Facebook link sharing preview

189User-agent: facebookexternalhit

190Allow: /

191

192

193# Sitemaps

194Sitemap: https://www.dw.com/sitemap.xml

195

What do the bots actually get?

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

History

19 October 2026: first checked.
2 November 2026: started blocking SemrushBot.
9 November 2026: stopped blocking SemrushBot.

Questions

Does dw.com block GPTBot?

Yes. dw.com’s robots.txt disallows GPTBot from the whole site (line 99: 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 dw.com block ClaudeBot?

Yes. dw.com’s robots.txt disallows ClaudeBot from the whole site (line 69: Disallow: /). ClaudeBot is Anthropic’s crawler for training data. Checked 9 November 2026.

Does dw.com block Google-Extended?

Yes. dw.com’s robots.txt disallows Google-Extended from the whole site (line 96: 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 dw.com block PerplexityBot?

Yes. dw.com’s robots.txt disallows PerplexityBot from the whole site (line 147: Disallow: /). PerplexityBot is the crawler that indexes pages for Perplexity’s answers. Checked 9 November 2026.

Can ChatGPT search find dw.com?

Not through its own crawler. dw.com’s robots.txt disallows OAI-SearchBot from the whole site (line 132: Disallow: /). OAI-SearchBot is the crawler behind ChatGPT search; blocking it keeps the site out of ChatGPT’s search answers. Checked 9 November 2026.