Who blocks AI · #367 in the Majestic Million

robots.txt · checked 9 Nov 2026

Does eff.org block AI crawlers?

No. eff.org’s robots.txt lets all 19 AI crawlers we track crawl the site, though it keeps GPTBot, ClaudeBot and 2 more out of some paths. Search engines such as Googlebot and Bingbot may crawl it.

GPTBotPartly blocked OAI-SearchBotAllowed ClaudeBotPartly blocked PerplexityBotAllowed Google-ExtendedPartly blocked CCBotPartly blocked

robots.txt: www.eff.org/robots.txt · 161 lines
llms.txt: found
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	Partly blocked	line 82 · `Disallow: /includes/` line 83 · `Disallow: /misc/` and 66 more
`ClaudeBot`	Anthropic	Partly blocked	line 82 · `Disallow: /includes/` line 83 · `Disallow: /misc/` and 66 more
`Google-Extended`	Google	Partly blocked	line 82 · `Disallow: /includes/` line 83 · `Disallow: /misc/` and 66 more
`CCBot`	Common Crawl	Partly blocked	line 82 · `Disallow: /includes/` line 83 · `Disallow: /misc/` and 66 more
`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	Partly blocked	line 82 · `Disallow: /includes/` line 83 · `Disallow: /misc/` and 66 more
`SemrushBot`	Semrush	Partly blocked	line 82 · `Disallow: /includes/` line 83 · `Disallow: /misc/` and 66 more
`MJ12bot`	Majestic	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`DotBot`	Moz	Allowed	no rule matches the home page

View www.eff.org/robots.txt · 161 lines

2# robots.txt

4# This file is to prevent the crawling and indexing of certain parts

5# of your site by web crawlers and spiders run by sites like Yahoo!

6# and Google. By telling these "robots" where not to go on your site,

7# you save bandwidth and server resources.

9# This file will be ignored unless it is at the root of your host:

10# Used: http://example.com/robots.txt

11# Ignored: http://example.com/site/robots.txt

12#

13# For more information about the robots.txt standard, see:

14# http://www.robotstxt.org/robotstxt.html

16# Slow down aggressive SEO crawlers

17User-agent: SemrushBot

18Crawl-delay: 30

20User-agent: AhrefsBot

21Crawl-delay: 30

23User-agent: MJ12bot

24Crawl-delay: 30

26# AI training crawlers — higher delay (or Disallow: / if preferred)

27User-agent: GPTBot

28Crawl-delay: 30

30User-agent: Google-Extended

31Crawl-delay: 30

33User-agent: CCBot

34Crawl-delay: 60

36User-agent: anthropic-ai

37Crawl-delay: 30

39User-agent: ClaudeBot

40Crawl-delay: 30

42# Meta's social preview crawler ignores Crawl-delay, but document intent

43User-agent: facebookexternalhit

44Crawl-delay: 10

46User-agent: *

47Crawl-delay: 30

48# CSS, JS, Images

49Allow: /misc/*.css$

50Allow: /misc/*.css?

51Allow: /misc/*.js$

52Allow: /misc/*.js?

53Allow: /misc/*.gif

54Allow: /misc/*.jpg

55Allow: /misc/*.jpeg

56Allow: /misc/*.png

57Allow: /modules/*.css$

58Allow: /modules/*.css?

59Allow: /modules/*.js$

60Allow: /modules/*.js?

61Allow: /modules/*.gif

62Allow: /modules/*.jpg

63Allow: /modules/*.jpeg

64Allow: /modules/*.png

65Allow: /profiles/*.css$

66Allow: /profiles/*.css?

67Allow: /profiles/*.js$

68Allow: /profiles/*.js?

69Allow: /profiles/*.gif

70Allow: /profiles/*.jpg

71Allow: /profiles/*.jpeg

72Allow: /profiles/*.png

73Allow: /themes/*.css$

74Allow: /themes/*.css?

75Allow: /themes/*.js$

76Allow: /themes/*.js?

77Allow: /themes/*.gif

78Allow: /themes/*.jpg

79Allow: /themes/*.jpeg

80Allow: /themes/*.png

81# Directories

82Disallow: /includes/

83Disallow: /misc/

84Disallow: /modules/

85Disallow: /profiles/

86Disallow: /scripts/

87Disallow: /themes/

88# Files

89Disallow: /CHANGELOG.txt

90Disallow: /cron.php

91Disallow: /INSTALL.mysql.txt

92Disallow: /INSTALL.pgsql.txt

93Disallow: /INSTALL.sqlite.txt

94Disallow: /install.php

95Disallow: /INSTALL.txt

96Disallow: /LICENSE.txt

97Disallow: /MAINTAINERS.txt

98Disallow: /update.php

99Disallow: /UPGRADE.txt

100Disallow: /xmlrpc.php

101# Paths (clean URLs)

102Disallow: /admin/

103Disallow: /comment/reply/

104Disallow: /filter/tips/

105Disallow: /node/add/

106Disallow: /search/

107Disallow: /user/register/

108Disallow: /user/password/

109Disallow: /user/login/

110Disallow: /user/logout/

111# Paths (no clean URLs)

112Disallow: /?q=admin/

113Disallow: /?q=comment/reply/

114Disallow: /?q=filter/tips/

115Disallow: /?q=node/add/

116Disallow: /?q=search/

117Disallow: /?q=user/password/

118Disallow: /?q=user/register/

119Disallow: /?q=user/login/

120Disallow: /?q=user/logout/

121

122# EFF Stuff

123

124# Don't crawl pages endlessly.

125Disallow: /*?*page=

126Allow: /updates?page=

127Disallow: /documents?language=

128Allow: /documents?page=

129

130# Disallow language prefixes, these should be passed via the `language` param.

131Disallow: /am/*

132Disallow: /ar/*

133Disallow: /de/*

134Disallow: /el/*

135Disallow: /en/*

136Disallow: /es/*

137Disallow: /fa/*

138Disallow: /fr/*

139Disallow: /hi/*

140Disallow: /it/*

141Disallow: /ja/*

142Disallow: /ko/*

143Disallow: /my/*

144Disallow: /nb/*

145Disallow: /nl/*

146Disallow: /pl/*

147Disallow: /pt/*

148Disallow: /pt-br/*

149Disallow: /ro/*

150Disallow: /ru/*

151Disallow: /sh/*

152Disallow: /sv/*

153Disallow: /th/*

154Disallow: /tr/*

155Disallow: /uk/*

156Disallow: /vi/*

157Disallow: /wp/*

158Disallow: /zh/*

159Disallow: /zh-hans/*

160Disallow: /zh-hant/*

161

What do the bots actually get?

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

History

19 October 2026: first checked.
2 November 2026: robots.txt readable again.

Questions

Does eff.org block GPTBot?

Partly. eff.org’s robots.txt keeps GPTBot out of some paths, such as /includes/, and lets it crawl the rest. GPTBot is OpenAI’s crawler for training data; blocking it doesn’t affect ChatGPT search, which uses OAI-SearchBot. Checked 9 November 2026.

Does eff.org block ClaudeBot?

Partly. eff.org’s robots.txt keeps ClaudeBot out of some paths, such as /includes/, and lets it crawl the rest. ClaudeBot is Anthropic’s crawler for training data. Checked 9 November 2026.

Does eff.org block Google-Extended?

Partly. eff.org’s robots.txt keeps Google-Extended out of some paths, such as /includes/, and lets it crawl the rest. 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 eff.org block PerplexityBot?

No. eff.org’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 eff.org?

Yes. eff.org’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.