Who blocks AI · #1095 in the Majestic Million

robots.txt · checked 9 Nov 2026

Does vanityfair.com block AI crawlers?

Yes. vanityfair.com’s robots.txt blocks 16 of the 19 AI crawlers we track, including ClaudeBot, Google-Extended, PerplexityBot and 13 more. It also blocks PetalBot among search engines.

GPTBotAllowed OAI-SearchBotAllowed ClaudeBotBlocked PerplexityBotBlocked Google-ExtendedBlocked CCBotBlocked

robots.txt: www.vanityfair.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	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	Blocked	line 95 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: PetalBot`
`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 95 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: PerplexityBot`
`Claude-SearchBot`	Anthropic	Blocked	line 95 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Claude-SearchBot`
`DuckAssistBot`	DuckDuckGo	Blocked	line 95 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: DuckAssistBot`
`Amazonbot`	Amazon	Blocked	line 95 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Amazonbot`
`YouBot`	You.com	Blocked	line 95 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: YouBot`

AI training

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`GPTBot`	OpenAI	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`ClaudeBot`	Anthropic	Blocked	line 95 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: ClaudeBot`
`Google-Extended`	Google	Blocked	line 95 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Google-Extended`
`CCBot`	Common Crawl	Blocked	line 95 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: CCBot`
`Applebot-Extended`	Apple	Blocked	line 95 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Applebot-Extended`
`GoogleOther`	Google	Blocked	line 95 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: GoogleOther`
`Meta-ExternalAgent`	Meta	Blocked	line 95 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: meta-externalagent`
`Bytespider`	ByteDance	Blocked	line 95 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Bytespider`

User-triggered fetchers

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`ChatGPT-User`	OpenAI	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`Claude-User`	Anthropic	Blocked	line 95 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Claude-User`
`Perplexity-User`	Perplexity	Blocked	line 95 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Perplexity-User`
`MistralAI-User`	Mistral	Blocked	line 95 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: MistralAI-User`
`Meta-ExternalFetcher`	Meta	Blocked	line 95 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: meta-externalfetcher`

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.vanityfair.com/robots.txt · 95 lines

1Sitemap: https://www.vanityfair.com/sitemap.xml

2Sitemap: https://www.vanityfair.com/tagpages-sitemap.xml

3Sitemap: https://www.vanityfair.com/contributors-sitemap.xml

4Sitemap: https://www.vanityfair.com/bundles-sitemap.xml

5Sitemap: https://www.vanityfair.com/branded-sitemap.xml

6Sitemap: https://www.vanityfair.com/feed/google-latest-news/sitemap-google-news

7Sitemap: https://www.vanityfair.com/feed/rss

8Sitemap: https://www.vanityfair.com/feed/oscars-feed/rss

9Sitemap: https://www.vanityfair.com/feed/met-gala-feed/rss

11User-agent: *

12Disallow: /*?

13Allow: /*?page

14Allow: /*.xml?

15Allow: /*.js

16Allow: /*.css

17Allow: /*.ico

18Allow: /verso/static

19Allow: /*.svg

20Allow: /*.png

21Allow: /*.jpg

22Allow: /*.jpeg

23Allow: /*rss?

24Allow: /*?id=

25Disallow: /auth/

26Disallow: /account/

27Disallow: /user/

28Disallow: /user-context

29Disallow: /preview/

30Disallow: /search

31Disallow: /product/

32Disallow: /cdn-cgi/

33Disallow: /services.min.js

34Disallow: /com.condenast/yv8

35Disallow: /reject-all

36Disallow: */c_limit/

38###

39Allow: /v2/offers/vfa

40Allow: /*?*utm_medium=social

41Allow: /*?*utm_medium=syndication

42Disallow: /journey/compiler/amp/iframe.html

43Disallow: /*.pdf

44Disallow: /api/search?page=

45###

47User-agent: AmazonAdBot

48User-agent: FacebookExternalHit

49User-agent: Google-InspectionTool

50User-agent: LinkedInBot

51User-agent: Pinterestbot

52User-agent: Storebot-Google

53User-agent: TikTokSpider

54User-agent: Twitterbot

55Allow: /

57User-agent: Amazonbot

58User-agent: Applebot-Extended

59User-agent: archive.org_bot

60User-agent: Bravebot

61User-agent: Brightbot 1.0

62User-agent: Bytespider

63User-agent: CCBot

64User-agent: Claude-SearchBot

65User-agent: Claude-User

66User-agent: ClaudeBot

67User-agent: cohere-ai

68User-agent: cohere-training-data-crawler

69User-agent: Diffbot

70User-agent: DuckAssistBot

71User-agent: factset_spyderbot

72User-agent: FirecrawlAgent

73User-agent: Google-CloudVertexBot

74User-agent: Google-Extended

75User-agent: GoogleOther

76User-agent: heritrix

77User-agent: ia_archiver

78User-agent: ia_archiver-web.archive.org

79User-agent: meta-externalagent

80User-agent: meta-externalfetcher

81User-agent: meta-webindexer

82User-agent: MistralAI-User

83User-agent: PanguBot

84User-agent: Perplexity-User

85User-agent: PerplexityBot

86User-agent: PetalBot

87User-agent: Scrapy

88User-agent: Shap-User

89User-agent: ShapBot

90User-agent: Timpibot

91User-agent: Yisouspider

92User-agent: YouBot

93User-agent: Webzio

94User-agent: Webzio-Extended

95Disallow: /

What do the bots actually get?

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

History

19 October 2026: first checked.

Questions

Does vanityfair.com block GPTBot?

No. vanityfair.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 vanityfair.com block ClaudeBot?

Yes. vanityfair.com’s robots.txt disallows ClaudeBot from the whole site (line 95: Disallow: /). ClaudeBot is Anthropic’s crawler for training data. Checked 9 November 2026.

Does vanityfair.com block Google-Extended?

Yes. vanityfair.com’s robots.txt disallows Google-Extended from the whole site (line 95: 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 vanityfair.com block PerplexityBot?

Yes. vanityfair.com’s robots.txt disallows PerplexityBot from the whole site (line 95: Disallow: /). PerplexityBot is the crawler that indexes pages for Perplexity’s answers. Checked 9 November 2026.

Can ChatGPT search find vanityfair.com?

Yes. vanityfair.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.