Who blocks AI · #73 in the Majestic Million

robots.txt · checked 9 Nov 2026

Does medium.com block AI crawlers?

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

GPTBotBlocked OAI-SearchBotAllowed ClaudeBotBlocked PerplexityBotAllowed Google-ExtendedAllowed CCBotAllowed

robots.txt: medium.com/robots.txt · 40 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 30 · `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 30 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: GPTBot`
`ClaudeBot`	Anthropic	Blocked	line 30 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: ClaudeBot`
`Google-Extended`	Google	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`CCBot`	Common Crawl	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`Applebot-Extended`	Apple	Blocked	line 30 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Applebot-Extended`
`GoogleOther`	Google	Blocked	line 30 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: GoogleOther`
`Meta-ExternalAgent`	Meta	Blocked	line 30 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: meta-externalagent`
`Bytespider`	ByteDance	Blocked	line 30 · `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 medium.com/robots.txt · 40 lines

1User-Agent: *

2Disallow: /m/

3Disallow: /me/

4Disallow: /@me$

5Disallow: /@me/

6Disallow: /*/edit$

7Disallow: /*/*/edit$

8Disallow: /media/

9Disallow: /p/*/share

10Disallow: /r/

11Disallow: /trending

12Disallow: /search?q$

13Disallow: /search?q=

14Disallow: /*/search?q=

15Disallow: /*/search/*?q=

16Disallow: /*/*source=

17Allow: /_/api/users/*/meta

18Allow: /_/api/users/*/profile/stream

19Allow: /_/api/posts/*/responses

20Allow: /_/api/posts/*/responsesStream

21Allow: /_/api/posts/*/related

22User-Agent: Amazonbot

23User-Agent: Applebot-Extended

24User-Agent: Bytespider

25User-Agent: ClaudeBot

26User-Agent: FacebookBot

27User-Agent: GoogleOther

28User-Agent: GPTBot

29User-Agent: meta-externalagent

30Disallow: /

31Allow: /about

32Allow: /business

33Allow: /earn

34Allow: /gift

35Allow: /membership

36Allow: /partner-program

37Allow: /verified-authors

38Sitemap: https://medium.com/sitemap/sitemap.xml

39License: https://medium.com/license.xml

What do the bots actually get?

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

History

19 October 2026: first checked.

Questions

Does medium.com block GPTBot?

Yes. medium.com’s robots.txt disallows GPTBot from the whole site (line 30: 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 medium.com block ClaudeBot?

Yes. medium.com’s robots.txt disallows ClaudeBot from the whole site (line 30: Disallow: /). ClaudeBot is Anthropic’s crawler for training data. Checked 9 November 2026.

Does medium.com block Google-Extended?

No. medium.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 medium.com block PerplexityBot?

No. medium.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 medium.com?

Yes. medium.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.