Does umd.edu block AI crawlers?

Yes. umd.edu’s robots.txt blocks 2 of the 19 AI crawlers we track, including GPTBot and PerplexityBot. Search engines such as Googlebot and Bingbot may crawl it.

GPTBotBlocked OAI-SearchBotAllowed ClaudeBotAllowed PerplexityBotBlocked Google-ExtendedAllowed CCBotAllowed

robots.txt: umd.edu/robots.txt · 14 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 7 · `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	Allowed	no rule matches the home page

AI training

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`GPTBot`	OpenAI	Blocked	line 7 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: GPTBot`
`ClaudeBot`	Anthropic	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`Google-Extended`	Google	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`CCBot`	Common Crawl	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`Applebot-Extended`	Apple	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`GoogleOther`	Google	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`Meta-ExternalAgent`	Meta	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`Bytespider`	ByteDance	Allowed	no rule matches the home page

User-triggered fetchers

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`ChatGPT-User`	OpenAI	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`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	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 umd.edu/robots.txt · 14 lines

1# robots.txt for https://umd.edu/

3Sitemap: https://umd.edu/sitemaps-1-sitemap.xml

5User-agent: GPTBot

6User-agent: PerplexityBot

7Disallow: /

9User-agent: *

10Disallow: /cpresources/

11Disallow: /vendor/

12Disallow: /.env

13Disallow: /cache/

What do the bots actually get?

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

History

19 October 2026: first checked.
2 November 2026: stopped blocking Google-Extended.

Questions

Does umd.edu block GPTBot?

Yes. umd.edu’s robots.txt disallows GPTBot from the whole site (line 7: 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 umd.edu block ClaudeBot?

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

Does umd.edu block Google-Extended?

No. umd.edu’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 umd.edu block PerplexityBot?

Yes. umd.edu’s robots.txt disallows PerplexityBot from the whole site (line 7: Disallow: /). PerplexityBot is the crawler that indexes pages for Perplexity’s answers. Checked 9 November 2026.

Can ChatGPT search find umd.edu?

Yes. umd.edu’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.