Does elsevier.com block AI crawlers?

No. elsevier.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.elsevier.com/robots.txt · 32 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 28 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`Bingbot`	Microsoft	Allowed	line 28 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`DuckDuckBot`	DuckDuckGo	Allowed	line 28 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`Applebot`	Apple	Allowed	line 28 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`PetalBot`	Huawei	Allowed	line 28 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`YandexBot`	Yandex	Allowed	line 28 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`Baiduspider`	Baidu	Allowed	line 28 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`

AI search

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`OAI-SearchBot`	OpenAI	Allowed	line 28 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`PerplexityBot`	Perplexity	Allowed	line 28 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`Claude-SearchBot`	Anthropic	Allowed	line 28 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`DuckAssistBot`	DuckDuckGo	Allowed	line 28 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`Amazonbot`	Amazon	Allowed	line 28 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`YouBot`	You.com	Allowed	line 28 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`

AI training

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`GPTBot`	OpenAI	Allowed	line 28 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`ClaudeBot`	Anthropic	Allowed	line 28 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`Google-Extended`	Google	Allowed	line 28 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`CCBot`	Common Crawl	Allowed	line 28 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`Applebot-Extended`	Apple	Allowed	line 28 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`GoogleOther`	Google	Allowed	line 28 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`Meta-ExternalAgent`	Meta	Allowed	line 28 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`Bytespider`	ByteDance	Allowed	line 28 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`

User-triggered fetchers

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`ChatGPT-User`	OpenAI	Allowed	line 28 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`Claude-User`	Anthropic	Allowed	line 28 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`Perplexity-User`	Perplexity	Allowed	line 28 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`MistralAI-User`	Mistral	Allowed	line 28 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`Meta-ExternalFetcher`	Meta	Allowed	line 28 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`

SEO tools

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`AhrefsBot`	Ahrefs	Allowed	line 28 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`SemrushBot`	Semrush	Allowed	line 28 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`MJ12bot`	Majestic	Allowed	line 28 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`DotBot`	Moz	Allowed	line 28 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`

View www.elsevier.com/robots.txt · 32 lines

1# robots.txt file for https://www.elsevier.com

3# Disallow

4User-agent: FAST Enterprise Crawler 6 / Scirus

5Disallow: /

7User-agent: innosense/Nutch-1.0

8Disallow: /

10User-agent: Sogou web spider/4.0

11Disallow: /

13User-agent: Xenu Link Sleuth/1.3.8

14Disallow: /

16User-agent: discoverybot/2.0

17Disallow: /

19User-agent: YoudaoBot/1.0

20Disallow: /

22User-agent: Sogou web spider/3.0

23Disallow: /

26# Allow

27User-agent: *

28Allow: /

30# Sitemaps

31Sitemap: https://www.elsevier.com/sitemaps/index.xml

What do the bots actually get?

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

History

19 October 2026: first checked.

Questions

Does elsevier.com block GPTBot?

No. elsevier.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 elsevier.com block ClaudeBot?

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

Does elsevier.com block Google-Extended?

No. elsevier.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 elsevier.com block PerplexityBot?

No. elsevier.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 elsevier.com?

Yes. elsevier.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.