Who blocks AI · #632 in the Majestic Million

robots.txt · checked 9 Nov 2026

Does rollingstone.com block AI crawlers?

Yes. rollingstone.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-SearchBotBlocked ClaudeBotBlocked PerplexityBotBlocked Google-ExtendedBlocked CCBotBlocked

robots.txt: www.rollingstone.com/robots.txt · 118 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	Blocked	line 65 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: OAI-SearchBot`
`PerplexityBot`	Perplexity	Blocked	line 97 · `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	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`YouBot`	You.com	Blocked	line 109 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: YouBot`

AI training

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`GPTBot`	OpenAI	Blocked	line 61 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: GPTBot`
`ClaudeBot`	Anthropic	Blocked	line 69 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: ClaudeBot`
`Google-Extended`	Google	Blocked	line 85 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Google-Extended`
`CCBot`	Common Crawl	Blocked	line 41 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: CCBot`
`Applebot-Extended`	Apple	Blocked	line 33 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Applebot-Extended`
`GoogleOther`	Google	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`Meta-ExternalAgent`	Meta	Blocked	line 89 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Meta-ExternalAgent`
`Bytespider`	ByteDance	Blocked	line 37 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Bytespider`

User-triggered fetchers

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`ChatGPT-User`	OpenAI	Blocked	line 45 · `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	Blocked	line 93 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Meta-ExternalFetcher`

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.rollingstone.com/robots.txt · 118 lines

1Sitemap: https://www.rollingstone.com/sitemap_index.xml

2Sitemap: https://www.rollingstone.com/news-sitemap.xml

3User-agent: *

4Disallow: /wp-admin/

5Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php

6Disallow: /?s=

7Disallow: /*/?s=

8Disallow: /search/

9Disallow: /search?

10Disallow: *?v02

11Disallow: *?replytocom

12Disallow: /*preview=true

13Disallow: /*theme_preview=true

15User-agent: anthropic-ai

16Allow: /product-recommendations/

17Disallow: /

19User-agent: cohere-ai

20Allow: /product-recommendations/

21Disallow: /

23User-agent: omgili

24Allow: /product-recommendations/

25Disallow: /

27User-agent: omgilibot

28Allow: /product-recommendations/

29Disallow: /

31User-agent: Applebot-Extended

32Allow: /product-recommendations/

33Disallow: /

35User-agent: Bytespider

36Allow: /product-recommendations/

37Disallow: /

39User-agent: CCBot

40Allow: /product-recommendations/

41Disallow: /

43User-agent: ChatGPT-User

44Allow: /product-recommendations/

45Disallow: /

47User-agent: ChatGPT

48Allow: /product-recommendations/

49Disallow: /

51User-agent: DeepSeek

52Allow: /product-recommendations/

53Disallow: /

55User-agent: DeepSeekBot

56Allow: /product-recommendations/

57Disallow: /

59User-agent: GPTBot

60Allow: /product-recommendations/

61Disallow: /

63User-agent: OAI-SearchBot

64Allow: /product-recommendations/

65Disallow: /

67User-agent: ClaudeBot

68Allow: /product-recommendations/

69Disallow: /

71User-agent: Claude-Web

72Allow: /product-recommendations/

73Disallow: /

75User-agent: Diffbot

76Allow: /product-recommendations/

77Disallow: /

79User-agent: FacebookBot

80Allow: /product-recommendations/

81Disallow: /

83User-agent: Google-Extended

84Allow: /product-recommendations/

85Disallow: /

87User-agent: Meta-ExternalAgent

88Allow: /product-recommendations/

89Disallow: /

91User-agent: Meta-ExternalFetcher

92Allow: /product-recommendations/

93Disallow: /

95User-agent: PerplexityBot

96Allow: /product-recommendations/

97Disallow: /

99User-agent: Timpibot

100Allow: /product-recommendations/

101Disallow: /

102

103User-agent: Webzio-Extended

104Allow: /product-recommendations/

105Disallow: /

106

107User-agent: YouBot

108Allow: /product-recommendations/

109Disallow: /

110User-agent: cXensebot

111Crawl-delay: 5

112

113User-agent: Tollbot/1.0

114Allow: /

115

116

117

118

What do the bots actually get?

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

History

19 October 2026: first checked.

Questions

Does rollingstone.com block GPTBot?

Yes. rollingstone.com’s robots.txt disallows GPTBot from the whole site (line 61: 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 rollingstone.com block ClaudeBot?

Yes. rollingstone.com’s robots.txt disallows ClaudeBot from the whole site (line 69: Disallow: /). ClaudeBot is Anthropic’s crawler for training data. Checked 9 November 2026.

Does rollingstone.com block Google-Extended?

Yes. rollingstone.com’s robots.txt disallows Google-Extended from the whole site (line 85: 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 rollingstone.com block PerplexityBot?

Yes. rollingstone.com’s robots.txt disallows PerplexityBot from the whole site (line 97: Disallow: /). PerplexityBot is the crawler that indexes pages for Perplexity’s answers. Checked 9 November 2026.

Can ChatGPT search find rollingstone.com?

Not through its own crawler. rollingstone.com’s robots.txt disallows OAI-SearchBot from the whole site (line 65: Disallow: /). OAI-SearchBot is the crawler behind ChatGPT search; blocking it keeps the site out of ChatGPT’s search answers. Checked 9 November 2026.