Who blocks AI · #199 in the Majestic Million

robots.txt · checked 9 Nov 2026

Does ft.com block AI crawlers?

Yes. ft.com’s robots.txt blocks 10 of the 19 AI crawlers we track, including ClaudeBot, Google-Extended, PerplexityBot and 7 more. Search engines such as Googlebot and Bingbot may crawl it.

GPTBotAllowed OAI-SearchBotAllowed ClaudeBotBlocked PerplexityBotBlocked Google-ExtendedBlocked CCBotBlocked

robots.txt: www.ft.com/robots.txt · 92 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	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	Blocked	line 64 · `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	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	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`ClaudeBot`	Anthropic	Blocked	line 73 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: ClaudeBot`
`Google-Extended`	Google	Blocked	line 36 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Google-Extended`
`CCBot`	Common Crawl	Blocked	line 33 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: CCBot`
`Applebot-Extended`	Apple	Blocked	line 82 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Applebot-Extended`
`GoogleOther`	Google	Blocked	line 40 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: GoogleOther`
`Meta-ExternalAgent`	Meta	Blocked	line 85 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: meta-externalagent`
`Bytespider`	ByteDance	Blocked	line 52 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Bytespider`

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	Blocked	line 67 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Perplexity-User`
`MistralAI-User`	Mistral	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`Meta-ExternalFetcher`	Meta	Blocked	line 88 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Meta-ExternalFetcher`

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.ft.com/robots.txt · 92 lines

1# All use of FT content is subject to the Terms & Conditions and

2# Copyright Policy set out on FT.com

4# We expressly prohibit any use of our content or data for any

5# machine learning or artificial intelligence purposes, including

6# the training or development of AI technologies or machine learning

7# language models.

9# For any licensing queries please contact content.licensing@ft.com

11Sitemap: https://www.ft.com/sitemaps/index.xml

13User-agent: *

14Disallow: /__

15Disallow: /_fs-ch

16Disallow: /article/e63d8640-eeb3-4473-b0ad-aa6aec16d9fe

17Disallow: /buy/

18Disallow: /cancel/

19Disallow: /join/

20Disallow: /login

21Disallow: /myft

22Disallow: /offline/

23Disallow: /page-resources

24Disallow: /preferences/manage-cookies

25Disallow: /register/

26Disallow: /search

27Disallow: /signup

28Allow: /__origami/

29Allow: /__assets/

30Crawl-Delay: 1

32User-agent: CCBot

33Disallow: /

35User-agent: Google-Extended

36Disallow: /

37Allow: /*?syn-25a6b1a6=1

39User-agent: GoogleOther

40Disallow: /

42User-agent: anthropic-ai

43Disallow: /

45User-agent: omgili

46Disallow: /

48User-agent: omgilibot

49Disallow: /

51User-agent: Bytespider

52Disallow: /

54User-agent: cohere-ai

55Disallow: /

57User-agent: magpie-crawler

58Disallow: /

60User-agent: NewsNow

61Disallow: /

63User-agent: PerplexityBot

64Disallow: /

66User-agent: Perplexity-User

67Disallow: /

69User-agent: Claude-Web

70Disallow: /

72User-agent: ClaudeBot

73Disallow: /

75User-agent: Diffbot

76Disallow: /

78User-agent: FacebookBot

79Disallow: /

81User-agent: Applebot-Extended

82Disallow: /

84User-agent: meta-externalagent

85Disallow: /

87User-agent: Meta-ExternalFetcher

88Disallow: /

90User-agent: Meta-WebIndexer

91Disallow: /

What do the bots actually get?

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

History

19 October 2026: first checked.

Questions

Does ft.com block GPTBot?

No. ft.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 ft.com block ClaudeBot?

Yes. ft.com’s robots.txt disallows ClaudeBot from the whole site (line 73: Disallow: /). ClaudeBot is Anthropic’s crawler for training data. Checked 9 November 2026.

Does ft.com block Google-Extended?

Yes. ft.com’s robots.txt disallows Google-Extended from the whole site (line 36: 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 ft.com block PerplexityBot?

Yes. ft.com’s robots.txt disallows PerplexityBot from the whole site (line 64: Disallow: /). PerplexityBot is the crawler that indexes pages for Perplexity’s answers. Checked 9 November 2026.

Can ChatGPT search find ft.com?

Yes. ft.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.