Who blocks AI · #1172 in the Majestic Million

robots.txt · checked 9 Nov 2026

Does snopes.com block AI crawlers?

Yes. snopes.com’s robots.txt blocks 10 of the 19 AI crawlers we track, including GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and 7 more. It also blocks Applebot among search engines.

GPTBotBlocked OAI-SearchBotAllowed ClaudeBotBlocked PerplexityBotBlocked Google-ExtendedAllowed CCBotBlocked

robots.txt: www.snopes.com/robots.txt · 92 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	line 30 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`Bingbot`	Microsoft	Allowed	line 30 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`DuckDuckBot`	DuckDuckGo	Allowed	line 30 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`Applebot`	Apple	Blocked	line 85 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Applebot`
`PetalBot`	Huawei	Allowed	line 30 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`YandexBot`	Yandex	Allowed	line 30 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`Baiduspider`	Baidu	Allowed	line 30 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`

AI search

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`OAI-SearchBot`	OpenAI	Allowed	line 30 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`PerplexityBot`	Perplexity	Blocked	line 85 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: PerplexityBot`
`Claude-SearchBot`	Anthropic	Allowed	line 30 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`DuckAssistBot`	DuckDuckGo	Allowed	line 30 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`Amazonbot`	Amazon	Blocked	line 33 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Amazonbot`
`YouBot`	You.com	Blocked	line 85 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: YouBot`

AI training

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`GPTBot`	OpenAI	Blocked	line 48 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: GPTBot`
`ClaudeBot`	Anthropic	Blocked	line 45 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: ClaudeBot`
`Google-Extended`	Google	Allowed	line 30 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`CCBot`	Common Crawl	Blocked	line 42 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: CCBot`
`Applebot-Extended`	Apple	Blocked	line 36 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Applebot-Extended`
`GoogleOther`	Google	Allowed	line 30 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`Meta-ExternalAgent`	Meta	Blocked	line 51 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: meta-externalagent`
`Bytespider`	ByteDance	Blocked	line 39 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Bytespider`

User-triggered fetchers

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`ChatGPT-User`	OpenAI	Blocked	line 85 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: ChatGPT-User`
`Claude-User`	Anthropic	Allowed	line 30 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`Perplexity-User`	Perplexity	Allowed	line 30 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`MistralAI-User`	Mistral	Allowed	line 30 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`Meta-ExternalFetcher`	Meta	Allowed	line 30 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`

SEO tools

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`AhrefsBot`	Ahrefs	Allowed	line 30 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`SemrushBot`	Semrush	Allowed	line 30 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`MJ12bot`	Majestic	Allowed	line 30 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`DotBot`	Moz	Allowed	line 30 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`

View www.snopes.com/robots.txt · 92 lines

1# As a condition of accessing this website, you agree to abide by the following

2# content signals:

4# (a) If a Content-Signal = yes, you may collect content for the corresponding

5# use.

6# (b) If a Content-Signal = no, you may not collect content for the

7# corresponding use.

8# (c) If the website operator does not include a Content-Signal for a

9# corresponding use, the website operator neither grants nor restricts

10# permission via Content-Signal with respect to the corresponding use.

12# The content signals and their meanings are:

14# search: building a search index and providing search results (e.g., returning

15# hyperlinks and short excerpts from your website's contents). Search does not

16# include providing AI-generated search summaries.

17# ai-input: inputting content into one or more AI models (e.g., retrieval

18# augmented generation, grounding, or other real-time taking of content for

19# generative AI search answers).

20# ai-train: training or fine-tuning AI models.

22# ANY RESTRICTIONS EXPRESSED VIA CONTENT SIGNALS ARE EXPRESS RESERVATIONS OF

23# RIGHTS UNDER ARTICLE 4 OF THE EUROPEAN UNION DIRECTIVE 2019/790 ON COPYRIGHT

24# AND RELATED RIGHTS IN THE DIGITAL SINGLE MARKET.

26# BEGIN Cloudflare Managed content

28User-agent: *

29Content-Signal: search=yes,ai-train=no

30Allow: /

32User-agent: Amazonbot

33Disallow: /

35User-agent: Applebot-Extended

36Disallow: /

38User-agent: Bytespider

39Disallow: /

41User-agent: CCBot

42Disallow: /

44User-agent: ClaudeBot

45Disallow: /

47User-agent: GPTBot

48Disallow: /

50User-agent: meta-externalagent

51Disallow: /

53# END Cloudflare Managed Content

56User-agent: Amazonbot

57User-agent: anthropic-ai

58User-agent: Applebot

59User-agent: AwarioRssBot

60User-agent: AwarioSmartBot

61User-agent: Bytespider

62User-agent: CCBot

63User-agent: ChatGPT-User

64User-agent: ClaudeBot

65User-agent: Claude-Web

66User-agent: cohere-ai

67User-agent: DataForSeoBot

68User-agent: Diffbot

69User-agent: FacebookBot

70User-agent: FriendlyCrawler

71User-agent: GPTBot

72User-agent: img2dataset

73User-agent: ImagesiftBot

74User-agent: magpie-crawler

75User-agent: Meltwater

76User-agent: omgili

77User-agent: omgilibot

78User-agent: peer39_crawler

79User-agent: peer39_crawler/1.0

80User-agent: PerplexityBot

81User-agent: PiplBot

82User-agent: scoop.it

83User-agent: Seekr

84User-agent: YouBot

85Disallow: /

87User-agent: *

88Disallow:

90Sitemap: https://media.snopes.com/sitemaps/sitemap-index.xml

91Sitemap: https://media.snopes.com/sitemaps/sitemap-latest.xml

What do the bots actually get?

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

History

19 October 2026: first checked.

Questions

Does snopes.com block GPTBot?

Yes. snopes.com’s robots.txt disallows GPTBot from the whole site (line 48: 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 snopes.com block ClaudeBot?

Yes. snopes.com’s robots.txt disallows ClaudeBot from the whole site (line 45: Disallow: /). ClaudeBot is Anthropic’s crawler for training data. Checked 9 November 2026.

Does snopes.com block Google-Extended?

No. snopes.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 snopes.com block PerplexityBot?

Yes. snopes.com’s robots.txt disallows PerplexityBot from the whole site (line 85: Disallow: /). PerplexityBot is the crawler that indexes pages for Perplexity’s answers. Checked 9 November 2026.

Can ChatGPT search find snopes.com?

Yes. snopes.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.