Who blocks AI · #241 in the Majestic Million

robots.txt · checked 9 Nov 2026

Does ted.com block AI crawlers?

Yes. ted.com’s robots.txt blocks 8 of the 19 AI crawlers we track, including GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended and 5 more. Search engines such as Googlebot and Bingbot may crawl it.

GPTBotBlocked OAI-SearchBotPartly blocked ClaudeBotBlocked PerplexityBotPartly blocked Google-ExtendedBlocked CCBotBlocked

robots.txt: www.ted.com/robots.txt · 120 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	Partly blocked	line 44 · `Disallow: /api/` line 45 · `Disallow: /graphql` and 14 more
`YandexBot`	Yandex	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`Baiduspider`	Baidu	Partly blocked	line 18 · `Disallow: /api/` line 19 · `Disallow: /graphql` and 11 more

AI search

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`OAI-SearchBot`	OpenAI	Partly blocked	line 44 · `Disallow: /api/` line 45 · `Disallow: /graphql` and 14 more
`PerplexityBot`	Perplexity	Partly blocked	line 44 · `Disallow: /api/` line 45 · `Disallow: /graphql` and 14 more
`Claude-SearchBot`	Anthropic	Partly blocked	line 44 · `Disallow: /api/` line 45 · `Disallow: /graphql` and 14 more
`DuckAssistBot`	DuckDuckGo	Partly blocked	line 44 · `Disallow: /api/` line 45 · `Disallow: /graphql` and 14 more
`Amazonbot`	Amazon	Blocked	line 78 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Amazonbot`
`YouBot`	You.com	Partly blocked	line 44 · `Disallow: /api/` line 45 · `Disallow: /graphql` and 14 more

AI training

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`GPTBot`	OpenAI	Blocked	line 64 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: GPTBot`
`ClaudeBot`	Anthropic	Blocked	line 66 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: ClaudeBot`
`Google-Extended`	Google	Blocked	line 74 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Google-Extended`
`CCBot`	Common Crawl	Blocked	line 72 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: CCBot`
`Applebot-Extended`	Apple	Blocked	line 76 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Applebot-Extended`
`GoogleOther`	Google	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`Meta-ExternalAgent`	Meta	Blocked	line 80 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: meta-externalagent`
`Bytespider`	ByteDance	Blocked	line 86 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Bytespider`

User-triggered fetchers

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`ChatGPT-User`	OpenAI	Partly blocked	line 44 · `Disallow: /api/` line 45 · `Disallow: /graphql` and 14 more
`Claude-User`	Anthropic	Partly blocked	line 44 · `Disallow: /api/` line 45 · `Disallow: /graphql` and 14 more
`Perplexity-User`	Perplexity	Partly blocked	line 44 · `Disallow: /api/` line 45 · `Disallow: /graphql` and 14 more
`MistralAI-User`	Mistral	Partly blocked	line 44 · `Disallow: /api/` line 45 · `Disallow: /graphql` and 14 more
`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.ted.com/robots.txt · 120 lines

1User-agent: *

2Disallow: /api/

3Disallow: /graphql

4Disallow: /_next/data/

5Disallow: /services/

6Disallow: /me.json

7Disallow: /follows.json

8Disallow: /translations.json

9Disallow: /search

10Disallow: /latest

11Disallow: /latest-talk

12Disallow: /latest-playlist

13Disallow: /people

14Disallow: /profiles

15Disallow: /themes/rss

17User-agent: Baiduspider

18Disallow: /api/

19Disallow: /graphql

20Disallow: /_next/data/

21Disallow: /services/

22Disallow: /me.json

23Disallow: /follows.json

24Disallow: /translations.json

25Disallow: /search

26Disallow: /latest

27Disallow: /latest-talk

28Disallow: /latest-playlist

29Disallow: /people

30Disallow: /profiles

32# AI answer-engine crawlers — indexing allowed, data/API endpoints blocked

33# These crawlers power AI search citations; blocking removes TED from AI answers

34User-agent: OAI-SearchBot

35User-agent: ChatGPT-User

36User-agent: PerplexityBot

37User-agent: Perplexity-User

38User-agent: Claude-SearchBot

39User-agent: Claude-User

40User-agent: DuckAssistBot

41User-agent: MistralAI-User

42User-agent: YouBot

43User-agent: PetalBot

44Disallow: /api/

45Disallow: /graphql

46Disallow: /_next/data/

47Disallow: /services/

48Disallow: /me.json

49Disallow: /follows.json

50Disallow: /translations.json

51Disallow: /search

52Disallow: /latest

53Disallow: /latest-talk

54Disallow: /latest-playlist

55Disallow: /people

56Disallow: /profiles

57Disallow: /dashboard

58Disallow: /settings

59Disallow: /themes/rss

61# AI training-only crawlers — blocked sitewide

62# These crawlers harvest content for model training with no citation/referral value

63User-agent: GPTBot

64Disallow: /

65User-agent: ClaudeBot

66Disallow: /

67User-agent: anthropic-ai

68Disallow: /

69User-agent: Claude-Web

70Disallow: /

71User-agent: CCBot

72Disallow: /

73User-agent: Google-Extended

74Disallow: /

75User-agent: Applebot-Extended

76Disallow: /

77User-agent: Amazonbot

78Disallow: /

79User-agent: meta-externalagent

80Disallow: /

81User-agent: Meta-ExternalAgent

82Disallow: /

83User-agent: FacebookBot

84Disallow: /

85User-agent: Bytespider

86Disallow: /

87User-agent: cohere-ai

88Disallow: /

89User-agent: cohere-training-data-crawler

90Disallow: /

91User-agent: PanguBot

92Disallow: /

93User-agent: Diffbot

94Disallow: /

95User-agent: FriendlyCrawler

96Disallow: /

97User-agent: ImagesiftBot

98Disallow: /

99User-agent: img2dataset

100Disallow: /

101User-agent: omgili

102Disallow: /

103User-agent: omgilibot

104Disallow: /

105User-agent: Webzio-Extended

106Disallow: /

107User-agent: Timpibot

108Disallow: /

109User-agent: Brightbot

110Disallow: /

111User-agent: DataForSeoBot

112Disallow: /

113User-agent: DeepSeekBot

114Disallow: /

115User-agent: iaskspider

116Disallow: /

117User-agent: GrokBot

118Disallow: /

119

120Sitemap: https://www.ted.com/sitemap.xml

What do the bots actually get?

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

History

19 October 2026: first checked.

Questions

Does ted.com block GPTBot?

Yes. ted.com’s robots.txt disallows GPTBot from the whole site (line 64: 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 ted.com block ClaudeBot?

Yes. ted.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 ted.com block Google-Extended?

Yes. ted.com’s robots.txt disallows Google-Extended from the whole site (line 74: 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 ted.com block PerplexityBot?

Partly. ted.com’s robots.txt keeps PerplexityBot out of some paths, such as /api/, and lets it crawl the rest. PerplexityBot is the crawler that indexes pages for Perplexity’s answers. Checked 9 November 2026.

Can ChatGPT search find ted.com?

Partly. ted.com’s robots.txt keeps OAI-SearchBot out of some paths, such as /api/, and lets it crawl the rest. OAI-SearchBot is the crawler behind ChatGPT search; blocking it keeps the site out of ChatGPT’s search answers. Checked 9 November 2026.