Who blocks AI · #809 in the Majestic Million

robots.txt · checked 9 Nov 2026

Does va.gov block AI crawlers?

Yes. va.gov’s robots.txt blocks 1 of the 19 AI crawlers we track, including Amazonbot. Search engines such as Googlebot and Bingbot may crawl it.

GPTBotAllowed OAI-SearchBotAllowed ClaudeBotAllowed PerplexityBotAllowed Google-ExtendedAllowed CCBotAllowed

robots.txt: www.va.gov/robots.txt · 33 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	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`Claude-SearchBot`	Anthropic	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`DuckAssistBot`	DuckDuckGo	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`Amazonbot`	Amazon	Blocked	line 10 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Amazonbot`
`YouBot`	You.com	Allowed	no rule matches the home page

AI training

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`GPTBot`	OpenAI	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`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 www.va.gov/robots.txt · 33 lines

1User-agent: usasearch

2Allow: /

4# existing disallow on va.gov (may not be needed)

5User-agent: Synapse

6Disallow: /

8# block Amazon's AI training crawler

9User-agent: Amazonbot

10Disallow: /

12# existing disallow from vets.gov

13User-Agent: *

14Disallow: /analytics-opt-out.html

15Disallow: /cgi-bin/

16Disallow: /drupal

17Disallow: /covid19screen

18Disallow: /service-member-benefits/solid-start/schedule

19Disallow: /sitemap.xml

20# on-site search results are not useful to index

21Disallow: /search

23# disallow WIP VAMCs

24# make sure to add a trailing slash at the end of the path

25# to prevent sub-directories from being indexed

26# see https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/robots/create-robots-txt#useful-robots.txt-rules

29# sitemap index

30Sitemap: https://www.va.gov/sitemap_index.xml

31Sitemap: https://www.va.gov/sitemap-cb.xml

32Sitemap: https://www.va.gov/sitemap-nb.xml

What do the bots actually get?

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

History

19 October 2026: first checked.

Questions

Does va.gov block GPTBot?

No. va.gov’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 va.gov block ClaudeBot?

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

Does va.gov block Google-Extended?

No. va.gov’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 va.gov block PerplexityBot?

No. va.gov’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 va.gov?

Yes. va.gov’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.