Who blocks AI · #980 in the Majestic Million
robots.txt · checked 9 Nov 2026
Does mcgill.ca block AI crawlers?
No. mcgill.ca’s robots.txt lets all 19 AI crawlers we track crawl the site. Search engines such as Googlebot and Bingbot may crawl it.
GPTBotAllowedOAI-SearchBotAllowedClaudeBotAllowedPerplexityBotAllowedGoogle-ExtendedAllowedCCBotAllowed- robots.txt
- mcgill.ca/robots.txt · 147 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 | 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 | Allowed | no rule matches the home page |
ClaudeBot | Anthropic | Allowed | no rule matches the home page |
Google-Extended | Allowed | no rule matches the home page | |
CCBot | Common Crawl | Allowed | no rule matches the home page |
Applebot-Extended | Apple | Allowed | no rule matches the home page |
GoogleOther | 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 | 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 mcgill.ca/robots.txt · 147 lines
1#
2# robots.txt
3#
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.
8#
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
15
16Sitemap: https://www.mcgill.ca/root/sitemap-index.xml
17Sitemap: https://www.mcgill.ca/sitemap.xml
18
19User-agent: Lucidworks-Anda/2.0
20Crawl-delay: 0
21
22User-agent: Elastic-Crawler
23Crawl-delay: 0
24
25User-agent: *
26Crawl-delay: 5
27
28User-agent: archive.org_bot
29Allow: /study/*
30
31# CSS, JS, Images
32Allow: */misc/*.css$
33Allow: */misc/*.css?
34Allow: */misc/*.js$
35Allow: */misc/*.js?
36Allow: */misc/*.gif
37Allow: */misc/*.jpg
38Allow: */misc/*.jpeg
39Allow: */misc/*.png
40Allow: */modules/*.css$
41Allow: */modules/*.css?
42Allow: */modules/*.js$
43Allow: */modules/*.js?
44Allow: */modules/*.gif
45Allow: */modules/*.jpg
46Allow: */modules/*.jpeg
47Allow: */modules/*.png
48Allow: */profiles/*.css$
49Allow: */profiles/*.css?
50Allow: */profiles/*.js$
51Allow: */profiles/*.js?
52Allow: */profiles/*.gif
53Allow: */profiles/*.jpg
54Allow: */profiles/*.jpeg
55Allow: */profiles/*.png
56Allow: */themes/*.css$
57Allow: */themes/*.css?
58Allow: */themes/*.js$
59Allow: */themes/*.js?
60Allow: */themes/*.gif
61Allow: */themes/*.jpg
62Allow: */themes/*.jpeg
63Allow: */themes/*.png
64# Directories
65Disallow: */includes/
66Disallow: */modules/
67Disallow: */profiles/
68Disallow: */scripts/
69Disallow: */themes/
70# eCals
71Disallow: /study/*
72# Files
73Disallow: */CHANGELOG.txt
74Disallow: */cron.php
75Disallow: */INSTALL.mysql.txt
76Disallow: */INSTALL.pgsql.txt
77Disallow: */INSTALL.sqlite.txt
78Disallow: */install.php
79Disallow: */INSTALL.txt
80Disallow: */LICENSE.txt
81Disallow: */MAINTAINERS.txt
82Disallow: */update.php
83Disallow: */UPGRADE.txt
84Disallow: */xmlrpc.php
85Disallow: */misc/favicon.ico
86# Paths (clean URLs)
87Disallow: */admin/
88Disallow: */comment/reply/
89Disallow: */filter/tips/
90Disallow: */node/add/
91Disallow: */search/
92Disallow: /*/people/*
93Disallow: /*/events/*
94Disallow: /undergraduate-admissions/programs?*
95Disallow: /gradapplicants/programs?*
96Disallow: */user/register/
97Disallow: */user/password/
98Disallow: */user/login/
99Disallow: */user/logout/
100Disallow: */user
101# Paths (no clean URLs)
102Disallow: */?q=admin/
103Disallow: */?q=comment/reply/
104Disallow: */?q=filter/tips/
105Disallow: */?q=node/add/
106Disallow: */?q=search/
107Disallow: /?q=study/*/courses/search
108Disallow: /?q=study/*/programs/search
109Disallow: /?q=study/*/search/all
110Disallow: */?q=user/password/
111Disallow: */?q=user/register/
112Disallow: */?q=user/login/
113Disallow: */?q=user/logout/
114Disallow: /*.zip$
115Disallow: /*.gif$
116Disallow: /*.jpg$
117Disallow: /*.jpeg$
118Disallow: /*.png$
119Disallow: /*.tif$
120Disallow: /*.tiff$
121Disallow: /*.dll$
122Disallow: /*.exe$
123Disallow: /*.class$
124Disallow: /*.wmv$
125Disallow: /*.m4v$
126Disallow: /*.jar$
127Disallow: /*.gz$
128Disallow: /*.tar$
129Disallow: /*.css$
130Disallow: /*.inc$
131Disallow: /*.js$
132Disallow: /*.js.php$
133Disallow: /*.swf$
134Disallow: /*.fla$
135Disallow: /*.psd$
136Disallow: /*.m4a$
137Disallow: /*.m4p$
138Disallow: /*.aac$
139Disallow: /*.m2a$
140Disallow: /*.m2v$
141Disallow: /*.sit$
142Disallow: /*.dmg$
143Disallow: /*.wma$
144Disallow: /*.mdb$
145Disallow: /*.tar.gz2$
146Disallow: /*.rar$
147
What do the bots actually get?
This page reads robots.txt, which states what mcgill.ca 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 mcgill.ca Test a path in the robots.txt tester
History
- 19 October 2026: first checked.
Questions
Does mcgill.ca block GPTBot?
No. mcgill.ca’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 mcgill.ca block ClaudeBot?
No. mcgill.ca’s robots.txt lets ClaudeBot crawl the site. ClaudeBot is Anthropic’s crawler for training data. Checked 9 November 2026.
Does mcgill.ca block Google-Extended?
No. mcgill.ca’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 mcgill.ca block PerplexityBot?
No. mcgill.ca’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 mcgill.ca?
Yes. mcgill.ca’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.