Who blocks AI · #580 in the Majestic Million

robots.txt · checked 9 Nov 2026

Does medicalnewstoday.com block AI crawlers?

Yes. medicalnewstoday.com’s robots.txt blocks 7 of the 19 AI crawlers we track, including GPTBot, ClaudeBot, CCBot and 4 more. Search engines such as Googlebot and Bingbot may crawl it.

GPTBotBlocked OAI-SearchBotAllowed ClaudeBotBlocked PerplexityBotAllowed Google-ExtendedAllowed CCBotBlocked

robots.txt: www.medicalnewstoday.com/robots.txt · 120 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	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	Blocked	line 19 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Amazonbot`
`YouBot`	You.com	Allowed	no rule matches the home page

AI training

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`GPTBot`	OpenAI	Blocked	line 71 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: GPTBot`
`ClaudeBot`	Anthropic	Blocked	line 86 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: ClaudeBot`
`Google-Extended`	Google	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`CCBot`	Common Crawl	Blocked	line 83 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: CCBot`
`Applebot-Extended`	Apple	Blocked	line 74 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Applebot-Extended`
`GoogleOther`	Google	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`Meta-ExternalAgent`	Meta	Blocked	line 95 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Meta-ExternalAgent`
`Bytespider`	ByteDance	Blocked	line 80 · `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	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 www.medicalnewstoday.com/robots.txt · 120 lines

1User-agent: Mediapartners-Google*

2Disallow:

4User-agent: Nutch

5Crawl-delay: 5

6Disallow:

8User-agent: Slurp

9Disallow: /*.gif$

10Disallow: /*.jpg$

12# --- Amazon / AWS crawlers (begin) ---

14# AmazonAdbot is intentionally allowed (ad targeting — see HLMR-6504)

15User-agent: AmazonAdbot

16Disallow:

18User-agent: Amazonbot

19Disallow: /

21User-agent: Amzn-SearchBot

22Disallow: /

24User-agent: Amzn-User

25Disallow: /

27User-agent: amazon-kendra

28Disallow: /

30User-agent: amazon-QBusiness

31Disallow: /

33User-agent: bedrockbot

34Disallow: /

36User-agent: aws-quick-on-behalf-of-

37Disallow: /

39User-agent: AmazonProductDiscoverybot

40Disallow: /

42User-agent: AmazonBuyForMe

43Disallow: /

45User-agent: AmazonSellerInitiatedListing

46Disallow: /

48User-agent: NovaAct

49Disallow: /

51# --- Amazon / AWS crawlers (end) ---

53User-agent: *

54Crawl-delay: 5

55Disallow: /linkfwd.php

56Disallow: /counters.php

58# Wordpress Previews

59Disallow: /articles/mnt-*

60Disallow: /program/mnt-*

62# API Routes

63Disallow: /api/*

65# Invalid URLs

66Disallow: */null$

67Disallow: */inline$

68Disallow: */healthy/

70User-agent: GPTBot

71Disallow: /

73User-agent: Applebot-Extended

74Disallow: /

76User-agent: anthropic-ai

77Disallow: /

79User-agent: Bytespider

80Disallow: /

82User-agent: CCBot

83Disallow: /

85User-agent: ClaudeBot

86Disallow: /

88User-agent: Diffbot

89Disallow: /

91User-agent: FacebookBot

92Disallow: /

94User-agent: Meta-ExternalAgent

95Disallow: /

97User-agent: omgili

98Disallow: /

100User-agent: Timpibot

101Disallow: /

102

103User-agent: Webzio-Extended

104Disallow: /

105

106User-agent: DDM-DCipher/1.0.7

107Disallow: /

108

109# Sitemaps

110Sitemap: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/sitemap.xml

111

112# Widget Sampler

113Disallow: /articles/widget-sampler

114

115# Static Test Articles

116Disallow: /test/

117

118# Block AMP URLs

119Disallow: /amp/

120

What do the bots actually get?

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

History

19 October 2026: first checked.

Questions

Does medicalnewstoday.com block GPTBot?

Yes. medicalnewstoday.com’s robots.txt disallows GPTBot from the whole site (line 71: 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 medicalnewstoday.com block ClaudeBot?

Yes. medicalnewstoday.com’s robots.txt disallows ClaudeBot from the whole site (line 86: Disallow: /). ClaudeBot is Anthropic’s crawler for training data. Checked 9 November 2026.

Does medicalnewstoday.com block Google-Extended?

No. medicalnewstoday.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 medicalnewstoday.com block PerplexityBot?

No. medicalnewstoday.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 medicalnewstoday.com?

Yes. medicalnewstoday.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.