Who blocks AI · #681 in the Majestic Million

robots.txt · checked 9 Nov 2026

Does sfgate.com block AI crawlers?

Yes. sfgate.com’s robots.txt blocks 9 of the 19 AI crawlers we track, including ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, CCBot and 6 more. Search engines such as Googlebot and Bingbot may crawl it.

GPTBotAllowed OAI-SearchBotAllowed ClaudeBotBlocked PerplexityBotBlocked Google-ExtendedAllowed CCBotBlocked

robots.txt: www.sfgate.com/robots.txt · 44 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 25 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: perplexitybot`
`Claude-SearchBot`	Anthropic	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`DuckAssistBot`	DuckDuckGo	Blocked	line 25 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: duckassistbot`
`Amazonbot`	Amazon	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`YouBot`	You.com	Blocked	line 25 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: youbot`

AI training

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`GPTBot`	OpenAI	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`ClaudeBot`	Anthropic	Blocked	line 25 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: claudebot`
`Google-Extended`	Google	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`CCBot`	Common Crawl	Blocked	line 25 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: ccbot`
`Applebot-Extended`	Apple	Blocked	line 25 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: applebot-extended`
`GoogleOther`	Google	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`Meta-ExternalAgent`	Meta	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`Bytespider`	ByteDance	Blocked	line 25 · `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	Blocked	line 25 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: claude-user`
`Perplexity-User`	Perplexity	Blocked	line 25 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: perplexity-user`
`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.sfgate.com/robots.txt · 44 lines

1Sitemap: https://www.sfgate.com/sitemap.xml

2Sitemap: https://www.sfgate.com/sitemap_news.xml

4User-agent: ai2bot-dolma

5User-agent: anthropic-ai

6User-agent: applebot-extended

7User-agent: bytespider

8User-agent: ccbot

9User-agent: claude-user

10User-agent: claude-web

11User-agent: claudebot

12User-agent: cohere-ai

13User-agent: diffbot

14User-agent: duckassistbot

15User-agent: Friendlycrawler

16User-agent: omgili

17User-agent: omgilibot

18User-agent: perplexity-user

19User-agent: perplexitybot

20User-agent: scrapy

21User-agent: timpibot

22User-agent: youbot

23User-agent: webzio-extended

24User-agent: kangaroo-bot

25Disallow: /

27User-agent: AmazonAdBot

28Allow: /

30User-agent: *

31Disallow: /api

32Disallow: /business/press-releases/

33Disallow: /style/beauty/hearstmagazines/

34Disallow: /style/fashion/hearstmagazines/

35Disallow: /living/relationships/hearstmagazines/

36Disallow: /homeandgarden/home/hearstmagazines/

37Disallow: /living/wellness/hearstmagazines/

38Disallow: /movies/templates/listings

39Disallow: /food/dbapps/restaurants

40Disallow: /sso/action/logout

41Disallow: /general/dbapps/404

42Disallow: /coupons/visit

43Disallow: /search

44Disallow: /413gkwMT/

What do the bots actually get?

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

History

19 October 2026: first checked.

Questions

Does sfgate.com block GPTBot?

No. sfgate.com’s robots.txt lets GPTBot crawl the site. GPTBot is OpenAI’s crawler for training data; blocking it doesn’t affect ChatGPT search, which uses OAI-SearchBot. Checked 9 November 2026.

Does sfgate.com block ClaudeBot?

Yes. sfgate.com’s robots.txt disallows ClaudeBot from the whole site (line 25: Disallow: /). ClaudeBot is Anthropic’s crawler for training data. Checked 9 November 2026.

Does sfgate.com block Google-Extended?

No. sfgate.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 sfgate.com block PerplexityBot?

Yes. sfgate.com’s robots.txt disallows PerplexityBot from the whole site (line 25: Disallow: /). PerplexityBot is the crawler that indexes pages for Perplexity’s answers. Checked 9 November 2026.

Can ChatGPT search find sfgate.com?

Yes. sfgate.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.