Who blocks AI · #354 in the Majestic Million

robots.txt · checked 9 Nov 2026

Does economist.com block AI crawlers?

Yes. economist.com’s robots.txt blocks 12 of the 19 AI crawlers we track, including GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended and 9 more. It also blocks PetalBot among search engines.

GPTBotBlocked OAI-SearchBotBlocked ClaudeBotBlocked PerplexityBotBlocked Google-ExtendedBlocked CCBotBlocked

robots.txt: www.economist.com/robots.txt · 137 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	Blocked	line 108 · `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 62 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: OAI-SearchBot`
`PerplexityBot`	Perplexity	Blocked	line 46 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: PerplexityBot`
`Claude-SearchBot`	Anthropic	Blocked	line 25 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Claude-SearchBot`
`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 94 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: ClaudeBot`
`Google-Extended`	Google	Blocked	line 79 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Google-Extended`
`CCBot`	Common Crawl	Blocked	line 91 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: CCBot`
`Applebot-Extended`	Apple	Blocked	line 85 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Applebot-Extended`
`GoogleOther`	Google	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`Meta-ExternalAgent`	Meta	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`Bytespider`	ByteDance	Blocked	line 88 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Bytespider`

User-triggered fetchers

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`ChatGPT-User`	OpenAI	Blocked	line 18 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: ChatGPT-User`
`Claude-User`	Anthropic	Blocked	line 32 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Claude-User`
`Perplexity-User`	Perplexity	Blocked	line 53 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Perplexity-User`
`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.economist.com/robots.txt · 137 lines

1# robots.txt

3# Sitemaps

5Sitemap: https://www.economist.com/sitemap.xml

6Sitemap: https://www.economist.com/googlenews.xml

8# ==========================================

9# USER-FACING LLM BOTS

10# Allowed to fetch on behalf of a user

11# ==========================================

13User-agent: ChatGPT-User

14Allow: /pro$

15Allow: /pro/

16Allow: /syndication$

17Allow: /syndication/

18Disallow: /

20User-agent: Claude-SearchBot

21Allow: /pro$

22Allow: /pro/

23Allow: /syndication$

24Allow: /syndication/

25Disallow: /

27User-agent: Claude-User

28Allow: /pro$

29Allow: /pro/

30Allow: /syndication$

31Allow: /syndication/

32Disallow: /

34User-agent: Claude-Web

35Allow: /pro$

36Allow: /pro/

37Allow: /syndication$

38Allow: /syndication/

39Disallow: /

41User-agent: PerplexityBot

42Allow: /pro$

43Allow: /pro/

44Allow: /syndication$

45Allow: /syndication/

46Disallow: /

48User-agent: Perplexity-User

49Allow: /pro$

50Allow: /pro/

51Allow: /syndication$

52Allow: /syndication/

53Disallow: /

55# I have added OAI-SearchBot (OpenAI's live search agent)

56# as it behaves the same way as ChatGPT-User.

57User-agent: OAI-SearchBot

58Allow: /pro$

59Allow: /pro/

60Allow: /syndication$

61Allow: /syndication/

62Disallow: /

64# ==========================================

65# TRAINING BOTS & MASS SCRAPERS

66# Completely blocked from the entire site

67# ==========================================

69User-agent: GPTBot

70Disallow: /

72# Google-Extended is used by the Gemini app for searches on

73# behalf of the user but it also used for training

74User-agent: Google-Extended

75Allow: /pro$

76Allow: /pro/

77Allow: /syndication$

78Allow: /syndication/

79Disallow: /

81User-agent: anthropic-ai

82Disallow: /

84User-agent: Applebot-Extended

85Disallow: /

87User-Agent: Bytespider

88Disallow: /

90User-agent: CCBot

91Disallow: /

93User-agent: ClaudeBot

94Disallow: /

96# ==========================================

97# OTHER MISCELLANEOUS BOTS

98# Completely blocked

99# ==========================================

100

101User-agent: PiplBot

102Disallow: /

103

104User-agent: TurnitinBot

105Disallow: /

106

107User-agent: PetalBot

108Disallow: /

109

110User-agent: MoodleBot

111Disallow: /

112

113User-agent: magpie-crawler

114Disallow: /

115

116User-agent: ia_archiver

117Disallow: /

118

119User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; parse.ly scraper/0.16; +http://parsely.com)

120Disallow: /checkout

121

122# ==========================================

123# GENERAL CRAWLERS (e.g., Googlebot, Bingbot)

124# Allowed by default, but blocked from select paths

125# ==========================================

126User-agent: *

127Disallow: /5605/

128Disallow: /pubads.g.doubleclick.net/

129Disallow: /assets/infographic/

130Disallow: /search/

131Disallow: /search?q=

132Disallow: /graphql

133Disallow: /api

134Disallow: /subscribe/getstarted/

135Disallow: /checkout

136Disallow: /switch*

137Disallow: /audio-edition-podcast/*/index.xml

What do the bots actually get?

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

History

19 October 2026: first checked.

Questions

Does economist.com block GPTBot?

Yes. economist.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 economist.com block ClaudeBot?

Yes. economist.com’s robots.txt disallows ClaudeBot from the whole site (line 94: Disallow: /). ClaudeBot is Anthropic’s crawler for training data. Checked 9 November 2026.

Does economist.com block Google-Extended?

Yes. economist.com’s robots.txt disallows Google-Extended from the whole site (line 79: 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 economist.com block PerplexityBot?

Yes. economist.com’s robots.txt disallows PerplexityBot from the whole site (line 46: Disallow: /). PerplexityBot is the crawler that indexes pages for Perplexity’s answers. Checked 9 November 2026.

Can ChatGPT search find economist.com?

Not through its own crawler. economist.com’s robots.txt disallows OAI-SearchBot from the whole site (line 62: Disallow: /). OAI-SearchBot is the crawler behind ChatGPT search; blocking it keeps the site out of ChatGPT’s search answers. Checked 9 November 2026.