Who blocks AI · #1015 in the Majestic Million

robots.txt · checked 9 Nov 2026

Does pcworld.com block AI crawlers?

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

GPTBotBlocked OAI-SearchBotAllowed ClaudeBotBlocked PerplexityBotAllowed Google-ExtendedAllowed CCBotBlocked

robots.txt: www.pcworld.com/robots.txt · 154 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	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	Blocked	line 100 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: GPTBot`
`ClaudeBot`	Anthropic	Blocked	line 73 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: ClaudeBot`
`Google-Extended`	Google	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`CCBot`	Common Crawl	Blocked	line 70 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: CCBot`
`Applebot-Extended`	Apple	Blocked	line 52 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Applebot-Extended`
`GoogleOther`	Google	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`Meta-ExternalAgent`	Meta	Blocked	line 127 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Meta-ExternalAgent`
`Bytespider`	ByteDance	Blocked	line 67 · `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	Blocked	line 85 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: dotbot`

View www.pcworld.com/robots.txt · 154 lines

1# ------------------------------------------------------

2# Global Rules

3# ------------------------------------------------------

5User-agent: *

6Disallow: /search*

7Disallow: */filter/*

8Disallow: /*?utm_*

9Disallow: /*//*

10Disallow: /wp-admin/

11Disallow: /wp-login.php

12Disallow: /wp-register.php

13Disallow: /wp-includes/

14Disallow: /xmlrpc.php

15Disallow: /wp-json/

16Disallow: /feed/

17Disallow: /*/feed/

18Disallow: /comments/feed/

19Disallow: /*LICENSE.txt$

20Disallow: /*README.md$

21Disallow: /*README.txt$

22Disallow: /*license.txt$

23Disallow: /*readme.html$

24Disallow: /*readme.md$

25Disallow: /*readme.txt$

26Disallow: /*package.json$

27Disallow: /*composer.json$

28Disallow: /*composer.lock$

29Disallow: /*yarn.lock$

31# ------------------------------------------------------

32# Google Ads

33# ------------------------------------------------------

35User-agent: Mediapartners-Google

36Allow: /

38# ------------------------------------------------------

39# Unwanted Bots

40# ------------------------------------------------------

42User-agent: Ai2Bot-Dolma

43Disallow: /

45User-agent: AI2Bot

46Disallow: /

48User-agent: anthropic-ai

49Disallow: /

51User-agent: Applebot-Extended

52Disallow: /

54User-agent: Arquivo-web-crawler

55Disallow: /

57User-agent: AwarioRssBot

58Disallow: /

60User-agent: AwarioSmartBot

61Disallow: /

63User-agent: Barkrowler

64Disallow: /

66User-agent: Bytespider

67Disallow: /

69User-agent: CCBot

70Disallow: /

72User-agent: ClaudeBot

73Disallow: /

75User-agent: cohere-ai

76Disallow: /

78User-agent: cohere-training-data-crawler

79Disallow: /

81User-agent: crawler4j

82Disallow: /

84User-agent: dotbot

85Disallow: /

87User-agent: Diffbot

88Disallow: /

90User-agent: FacebookBot

91Disallow: /

93User-agent: FriendlyCrawler

94Disallow: /

96User-agent: Google-CloudVertexBot

97Disallow: /

99User-agent: GPTBot

100Disallow: /

101

102User-agent: https://hada.news

103Disallow: /

104

105User-agent: ICC-Crawler

106Disallow: /

107

108User-agent: ImagesiftBot

109Disallow: /

110

111User-agent: img2dataset

112Disallow: /

113

114User-agent: ISSCyberRiskCrawler

115Disallow: /

116

117User-agent: JenkersBot

118Disallow: /

119

120User-agent: Kangaroo Bot

121Disallow: /

122

123User-agent: Meltwater

124Disallow: /

125

126User-agent: Meta-ExternalAgent

127Disallow: /

128

129User-agent: MJ12bot

130Disallow: /

131

132User-agent: PanguBot

133Disallow: /

134

135User-agent: Scrapy

136Disallow: /

137

138User-agent: Seekr

139Disallow: /

140

141User-agent: Timpibot

142Disallow: /

143

144User-agent: VelenPublicWebCrawler

145Disallow: /

146

147User-agent: Webzio-Extended

148Disallow: /

149

150# ------------------------------------------------------

151# Sitemaps

152# ------------------------------------------------------

153

154Sitemap: https://www.pcworld.com/sitemap-index.xml

What do the bots actually get?

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

History

19 October 2026: first checked.
26 October 2026: stopped blocking PerplexityBot; stopped blocking Meta-ExternalFetcher.
9 November 2026: stopped blocking Google-Extended.

Questions

Does pcworld.com block GPTBot?

Yes. pcworld.com’s robots.txt disallows GPTBot from the whole site (line 100: 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 pcworld.com block ClaudeBot?

Yes. pcworld.com’s robots.txt disallows ClaudeBot from the whole site (line 73: Disallow: /). ClaudeBot is Anthropic’s crawler for training data. Checked 9 November 2026.

Does pcworld.com block Google-Extended?

No. pcworld.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 pcworld.com block PerplexityBot?

No. pcworld.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 pcworld.com?

Yes. pcworld.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.