Who blocks AI · #973 in the Majestic Million

robots.txt · checked 9 Nov 2026

Does medscape.com block AI crawlers?

Yes. medscape.com’s robots.txt blocks 6 of the 19 AI crawlers we track, including GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended and 3 more. Search engines such as Googlebot and Bingbot may crawl it.

GPTBotBlocked OAI-SearchBotAllowed ClaudeBotBlocked PerplexityBotBlocked Google-ExtendedBlocked CCBotBlocked

robots.txt: www.medscape.com/robots.txt · 51 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 36 · `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	Blocked	line 42 · `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 27 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: GPTBot`
`ClaudeBot`	Anthropic	Blocked	line 39 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: ClaudeBot`
`Google-Extended`	Google	Blocked	line 51 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Google-Extended`
`CCBot`	Common Crawl	Blocked	line 30 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: CCBot`
`Applebot-Extended`	Apple	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`GoogleOther`	Google	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 www.medscape.com/robots.txt · 51 lines

1User-agent: *

3Disallow: /viewprogram/*_pnt

4Disallow: /druginfo/monoinfobyid*

5Disallow: /cp/*

6Disallow: /memberprofile/*

7Disallow: /noscan/

8Disallow: /*/noscan/

9Disallow: /viewarticle*_print

10Disallow: /viewarticle*_reference

11Disallow: /s/

12Disallow: /index/*&aspen

13Disallow: /index/*&d2Previous

14Disallow: /consult/

15Disallow: /mtv/

16Disallow: /marketresearch

17Disallow: /sites/public/marketresearch

18Disallow: /features/mktg/public/pmr

19Disallow: /register?*

20Disallow: /search/

21Disallow: /px/*

22Disallow: /ai-search*

24Sitemap: https://www.medscape.com/sitemap_index.xml

26User-agent: GPTBot

27Disallow: /

29User-agent: CCBot

30Disallow: /

32User-agent: magpie-crawler

33Disallow: /

35User-Agent: PerplexityBot

36Disallow: /

38User-agent: ClaudeBot

39Disallow: /

41User-agent: Amazonbot

42Disallow: /

44User-agent: Arquivo-web-crawler

45Disallow: /

47User-agent: SeekportBot

48Crawl-delay: 2

50User-agent: Google-Extended

51Disallow: /

What do the bots actually get?

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

History

19 October 2026: first checked.

Questions

Does medscape.com block GPTBot?

Yes. medscape.com’s robots.txt disallows GPTBot from the whole site (line 27: 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 medscape.com block ClaudeBot?

Yes. medscape.com’s robots.txt disallows ClaudeBot from the whole site (line 39: Disallow: /). ClaudeBot is Anthropic’s crawler for training data. Checked 9 November 2026.

Does medscape.com block Google-Extended?

Yes. medscape.com’s robots.txt disallows Google-Extended from the whole site (line 51: 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 medscape.com block PerplexityBot?

Yes. medscape.com’s robots.txt disallows PerplexityBot from the whole site (line 36: Disallow: /). PerplexityBot is the crawler that indexes pages for Perplexity’s answers. Checked 9 November 2026.

Can ChatGPT search find medscape.com?

Yes. medscape.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.