Who blocks AI · #179 in the Majestic Million

robots.txt · checked 9 Nov 2026

Does time.com block AI crawlers?

No. time.com’s robots.txt lets all 19 AI crawlers we track crawl the site. Search engines such as Googlebot and Bingbot may crawl it.

GPTBotAllowed OAI-SearchBotAllowed ClaudeBotAllowed PerplexityBotAllowed Google-ExtendedAllowed CCBotAllowed

robots.txt: time.com/robots.txt · 95 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	Partly blocked	line 7 · `Disallow: /?search` line 8 · `Disallow: /?pano=*` and 77 more
`Bingbot`	Microsoft	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`DuckDuckBot`	DuckDuckGo	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`Applebot`	Apple	Partly blocked	line 7 · `Disallow: /?search` line 8 · `Disallow: /?pano=*` and 77 more
`PetalBot`	Huawei	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`YandexBot`	Yandex	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`Baiduspider`	Baidu	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`

AI search

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`OAI-SearchBot`	OpenAI	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`PerplexityBot`	Perplexity	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`Claude-SearchBot`	Anthropic	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`DuckAssistBot`	DuckDuckGo	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`Amazonbot`	Amazon	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`YouBot`	You.com	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`

AI training

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`GPTBot`	OpenAI	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`ClaudeBot`	Anthropic	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`Google-Extended`	Google	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`CCBot`	Common Crawl	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`Applebot-Extended`	Apple	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`GoogleOther`	Google	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`Meta-ExternalAgent`	Meta	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`Bytespider`	ByteDance	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`

User-triggered fetchers

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`ChatGPT-User`	OpenAI	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`Claude-User`	Anthropic	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`Perplexity-User`	Perplexity	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`MistralAI-User`	Mistral	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`Meta-ExternalFetcher`	Meta	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`

SEO tools

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`AhrefsBot`	Ahrefs	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`SemrushBot`	Semrush	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`MJ12bot`	Majestic	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`
`DotBot`	Moz	Allowed	line 2 · `Allow: /` under `User-agent: *`

View time.com/robots.txt · 95 lines

1User-Agent: *

2Allow: /

3Disallow: /c/

5User-Agent: Googlebot

6Allow: /replatform/_next/image*

7Disallow: /?search*

8Disallow: /*?pano=*

9Disallow: */munich/index_html*

10Disallow: /*?__rmid___get___page

11Disallow: /*?*__hsfp

12Disallow: /*?*__hstc

13Disallow: /*?*__rmid

14Disallow: /*?*__rmidpage

15Disallow: /*?*/*ref

16Disallow: /*?*002/*0902

17Disallow: /*?*2&hubs_content

18Disallow: /*?*ajs_event

19Disallow: /*?*app

20Disallow: /*?*attachment_id

21Disallow: /*?*author

22Disallow: /*?*bcpid

23Disallow: /*?*bcpidpage

24Disallow: /*?*cat

25Disallow: /*?*controlsVisibleOnLoad

26Disallow: /*?*country

27Disallow: /*?*curator

28Disallow: /*?*edition

29Disallow: /*?*egotecpage

30Disallow: /*?*fbclid

31Disallow: /*?*hl

32Disallow: /*?*hsCtaTracking

33Disallow: /*?*hubs_signup-cta

34Disallow: /*?*iframe

35Disallow: /*?*iid

36Disallow: /*?*industry

37Disallow: /*?*inline-read-more

38Disallow: /*?*kwp_4

39Disallow: /*?*library

40Disallow: /*?*limit

41Disallow: /*?*linkId

42Disallow: /*?*luicode

43Disallow: /*?*offset

44Disallow: /*?*omnil

45Disallow: /*?*onwardjourney

46Disallow: /*?*origin

47Disallow: /*?*page

48Disallow: /*?*PageSpeed

49Disallow: /*?*plan

50Disallow: /*?*poy-poll

51Disallow: /*?*ref

52Disallow: /*?*reviews_page

53Disallow: /*?*scrape

54Disallow: /*?*scriptPath

55Disallow: /*?*source

56Disallow: /*?*sr_source

57Disallow: /*?*subscription

58Disallow: /*?*ua

59Disallow: /*?*utm

60Disallow: /*?*utm_campaign

61Disallow: /*?*utm_medium

62Disallow: /*?*utm_source

63Disallow: /*?*xid

64Disallow: /*?bclid=

65Disallow: /*?bcpid=

66Disallow: /*?bctid=

67Disallow: /*?EGOTECpage

68Disallow: /*?hc_location

69Disallow: /*?pagespeed

70Disallow: /*?ref=

71Disallow: /*?ref=binfind.com

72Disallow: /*?sa=

73Disallow: /*?search

74Disallow: /feed

75Disallow: /nextadvisor/search/*

76Disallow: /page/*/?a_aid=

77Disallow: /page/*/?egotecpage

78Disallow: /page/*/?hc_location=

79Disallow: /page/*/?iq_id=

80Disallow: /page/*/?pcd=

81Disallow: /page/*/?search=

82Disallow: /search/?q=*

83Disallow: /time_tout/*

84Disallow: /uncategorized

85Disallow: /time_cover_hub

87User-Agent: BomboraBot

88Allow: /

90Sitemap: https://time.com/sitemap.xml

91Sitemap: https://time.com/news-sitemap.xml

92Sitemap: https://time.com/branded-content-sitemap.xml

93Sitemap: https://time.com/video-sitemap.xml

94Sitemap: https://time.com/video-landing-sitemap.xml

What do the bots actually get?

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

History

19 October 2026: first checked.
26 October 2026: robots.txt couldn’t be read.
2 November 2026: robots.txt readable again.

Questions

Does time.com block GPTBot?

No. time.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 time.com block ClaudeBot?

No. time.com’s robots.txt lets ClaudeBot crawl the site. ClaudeBot is Anthropic’s crawler for training data. Checked 9 November 2026.

Does time.com block Google-Extended?

No. time.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 time.com block PerplexityBot?

No. time.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 time.com?

Yes. time.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.