Who blocks AI · #102 in the Majestic Million

robots.txt · checked 9 Nov 2026

Does nature.com block AI crawlers?

Yes. nature.com’s robots.txt blocks 12 of the 19 AI crawlers we track, including GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended and 9 more. Search engines such as Googlebot and Bingbot may crawl it.

GPTBotBlocked OAI-SearchBotAllowed ClaudeBotBlocked PerplexityBotBlocked Google-ExtendedBlocked CCBotBlocked

robots.txt: www.nature.com/robots.txt · 99 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 76 · `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 56 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Amazonbot`
`YouBot`	You.com	Blocked	line 78 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: YouBot`

AI training

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`GPTBot`	OpenAI	Blocked	line 70 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: GPTBot`
`ClaudeBot`	Anthropic	Blocked	line 66 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: ClaudeBot`
`Google-Extended`	Google	Blocked	line 72 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Google-Extended`
`CCBot`	Common Crawl	Blocked	line 64 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: CCBot`
`Applebot-Extended`	Apple	Blocked	line 60 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Applebot-Extended`
`GoogleOther`	Google	Blocked	line 74 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: GoogleOther`
`Meta-ExternalAgent`	Meta	Blocked	line 80 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: meta-externalagent`
`Bytespider`	ByteDance	Blocked	line 62 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Bytespider`

User-triggered fetchers

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`ChatGPT-User`	OpenAI	Blocked	line 98 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: ChatGPT-User`
`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.nature.com/robots.txt · 99 lines

1User-agent: *

2Sitemap: https://www.nature.com/sitemap.xml

3Sitemap: https://www.nature.com/subjects/sitemap.xml

4Sitemap: https://www.nature.com/naturecareers/sitemapindex.xml

5Sitemap: https://www.nature.com/latest-news/sitemap.xml

6Sitemap: https://www.nature.com/sitemap-subjects-index.xml

7Disallow: /search

8Disallow: */1000$

9Disallow: /*/*/*/pf/

10Disallow: /*.otmi$

11Disallow: /*/*/*/*/otmi/

12Disallow: /*/*/*/*/fp/

13Disallow: /protocolexchange/labgroups/

14Disallow: /naturecareers/jobs/search

15Disallow: /webcasts/*

16Disallow: /*draft=*

17Disallow: /*foxtrotcallback=*

18Disallow: /*origin=*

19Disallow: /my-account

20Disallow: /*proof=t%2Btarget%3D\*

21Disallow: /*proof=*

22Disallow: /*/figures

23Disallow: /*/tables

24Disallow: /*/schemes

25Disallow: /*/structures

26Disallow: /*/metrics

27Disallow: /*/save-research

28Disallow: /*/saved-research

29Disallow: /saved-research

30Disallow: /platform/contextual

31Disallow: /articles/*.ris

32Disallow: /nature-index/article-api/

33Disallow: /nature-index/articles/saudi-arabia

34Disallow: /nature-index/articles/saudi-arabia-altmetric

35Disallow: /nature-index/city-maps/

36Disallow: /nature-index/country-outputs-api/

37Disallow: /nature-index/country-suggestion

38Disallow: /nature-index/country-suggestion/news-archive

39Disallow: /nature-index/global-city-map/data

40Disallow: /nature-index/institution-outputs-api/

41Disallow: /nature-index/institution-suggestion

42Disallow: /nature-index/institution-suggestion/news-archive

43Disallow: /naturecareers/session-img/

44Disallow: /naturecareers/jobsrss/

45Disallow: /nature-index/annual-tables/export/

46Disallow: /nature-index/country-outputs/export/

47Disallow: /nature-index/country-territory-research-output/export

48Disallow: /nature-index/institution-outputs/export/

49Disallow: /nature-index/institution-research-output/export

50Disallow: /nature-index/news/archive/search/by-country

51Disallow: /nature-index/news/archive/search/by-institution

52Disallow: /nature-index/annual-tables/2021/academic-normalized

53Disallow: */platform/disqus*

54Disallow: */cas-redirect/*

55User-Agent: Amazonbot

56Disallow: /

57User-Agent: anthropic-ai

58Disallow: /

59User-Agent: Applebot-Extended

60Disallow: /

61User-Agent: Bytespider

62Disallow: /

63User-Agent: CCBot

64Disallow: /

65User-Agent: ClaudeBot

66Disallow: /

67User-Agent: FacebookBot

68Disallow: /

69User-Agent: GPTBot

70Disallow: /

71User-Agent: Google-Extended

72Disallow: /

73User-Agent: GoogleOther

74Disallow: /

75User-Agent: PerplexityBot

76Disallow: /

77User-Agent: YouBot

78Disallow: /

79User-Agent: meta-externalagent

80Disallow: /

81User-Agent: ImagesiftBot

82Disallow: /

83User-Agent: cohere-ai

84Disallow: /

85User-Agent: Diffbot

86Disallow: /

87User-Agent: FriendlyCrawler

88Disallow: /

89User-Agent: img2dataset

90Disallow: /

91User-Agent: omgili

92Disallow: /

93User-Agent: omgilibot

94Disallow: /

95User-Agent: Claude-Web

96Disallow: /

97User-Agent: ChatGPT-User

98Disallow: /

What do the bots actually get?

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

History

19 October 2026: first checked.

Questions

Does nature.com block GPTBot?

Yes. nature.com’s robots.txt disallows GPTBot from the whole site (line 70: 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 nature.com block ClaudeBot?

Yes. nature.com’s robots.txt disallows ClaudeBot from the whole site (line 66: Disallow: /). ClaudeBot is Anthropic’s crawler for training data. Checked 9 November 2026.

Does nature.com block Google-Extended?

Yes. nature.com’s robots.txt disallows Google-Extended from the whole site (line 72: 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 nature.com block PerplexityBot?

Yes. nature.com’s robots.txt disallows PerplexityBot from the whole site (line 76: Disallow: /). PerplexityBot is the crawler that indexes pages for Perplexity’s answers. Checked 9 November 2026.

Can ChatGPT search find nature.com?

Yes. nature.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.