Who blocks AI · #570 in the Majestic Million

robots.txt · checked 9 Nov 2026

Does variety.com block AI crawlers?

Yes. variety.com’s robots.txt blocks 12 of the 19 AI crawlers we track, including GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended and 9 more. Search engines such as Googlebot and Bingbot may crawl it.

GPTBotBlocked OAI-SearchBotBlocked ClaudeBotBlocked PerplexityBotBlocked Google-ExtendedBlocked CCBotBlocked

robots.txt: variety.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	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	Blocked	line 67 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: OAI-SearchBot`
`PerplexityBot`	Perplexity	Blocked	line 99 · `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	Blocked	line 111 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: YouBot`

AI training

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`GPTBot`	OpenAI	Blocked	line 63 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: GPTBot`
`ClaudeBot`	Anthropic	Blocked	line 71 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: ClaudeBot`
`Google-Extended`	Google	Blocked	line 87 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Google-Extended`
`CCBot`	Common Crawl	Blocked	line 43 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: CCBot`
`Applebot-Extended`	Apple	Blocked	line 35 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Applebot-Extended`
`GoogleOther`	Google	Allowed	no rule matches the home page
`Meta-ExternalAgent`	Meta	Blocked	line 91 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Meta-ExternalAgent`
`Bytespider`	ByteDance	Blocked	line 39 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: Bytespider`

User-triggered fetchers

Bot	Operator	robots.txt	Deciding line
`ChatGPT-User`	OpenAI	Blocked	line 47 · `Disallow: /` under `User-agent: ChatGPT-User`
`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	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 variety.com/robots.txt · 120 lines

1Sitemap: https://variety.com/sitemap_index.xml

2Sitemap: https://variety.com/news-sitemap.xml

3User-agent: *

4Disallow: /wp-admin/

5Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php

6Disallow: /?s=

7Disallow: /*/?s=

8Disallow: /search/

9Disallow: /search?

10Disallow: *?v02

11Disallow: *?replytocom

12Disallow: /genre/

13Disallow: /genre/*

14Disallow: /*preview=true

15Disallow: /*theme_preview=true

17User-agent: anthropic-ai

18Allow: /2026/shopping/

19Disallow: /

21User-agent: cohere-ai

22Allow: /2026/shopping/

23Disallow: /

25User-agent: omgili

26Allow: /2026/shopping/

27Disallow: /

29User-agent: omgilibot

30Allow: /2026/shopping/

31Disallow: /

33User-agent: Applebot-Extended

34Allow: /2026/shopping/

35Disallow: /

37User-agent: Bytespider

38Allow: /2026/shopping/

39Disallow: /

41User-agent: CCBot

42Allow: /2026/shopping/

43Disallow: /

45User-agent: ChatGPT-User

46Allow: /2026/shopping/

47Disallow: /

49User-agent: ChatGPT

50Allow: /2026/shopping/

51Disallow: /

53User-agent: DeepSeek

54Allow: /2026/shopping/

55Disallow: /

57User-agent: DeepSeekBot

58Allow: /2026/shopping/

59Disallow: /

61User-agent: GPTBot

62Allow: /2026/shopping/

63Disallow: /

65User-agent: OAI-SearchBot

66Allow: /2026/shopping/

67Disallow: /

69User-agent: ClaudeBot

70Allow: /2026/shopping/

71Disallow: /

73User-agent: Claude-Web

74Allow: /2026/shopping/

75Disallow: /

77User-agent: Diffbot

78Allow: /2026/shopping/

79Disallow: /

81User-agent: FacebookBot

82Allow: /2026/shopping/

83Disallow: /

85User-agent: Google-Extended

86Allow: /2026/shopping/

87Disallow: /

89User-agent: Meta-ExternalAgent

90Allow: /2026/shopping/

91Disallow: /

93User-agent: Meta-ExternalFetcher

94Allow: /2026/shopping/

95Disallow: /

97User-agent: PerplexityBot

98Allow: /2026/shopping/

99Disallow: /

100

101User-agent: Timpibot

102Allow: /2026/shopping/

103Disallow: /

104

105User-agent: Webzio-Extended

106Allow: /2026/shopping/

107Disallow: /

108

109User-agent: YouBot

110Allow: /2026/shopping/

111Disallow: /

112User-agent: cXensebot

113Crawl-delay: 5

114

115User-agent: Tollbot/1.0

116Allow: /

117

118

119

120

What do the bots actually get?

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

History

19 October 2026: first checked.

Questions

Does variety.com block GPTBot?

Yes. variety.com’s robots.txt disallows GPTBot from the whole site (line 63: 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 variety.com block ClaudeBot?

Yes. variety.com’s robots.txt disallows ClaudeBot from the whole site (line 71: Disallow: /). ClaudeBot is Anthropic’s crawler for training data. Checked 9 November 2026.

Does variety.com block Google-Extended?

Yes. variety.com’s robots.txt disallows Google-Extended from the whole site (line 87: 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 variety.com block PerplexityBot?

Yes. variety.com’s robots.txt disallows PerplexityBot from the whole site (line 99: Disallow: /). PerplexityBot is the crawler that indexes pages for Perplexity’s answers. Checked 9 November 2026.

Can ChatGPT search find variety.com?

Not through its own crawler. variety.com’s robots.txt disallows OAI-SearchBot from the whole site (line 67: Disallow: /). OAI-SearchBot is the crawler behind ChatGPT search; blocking it keeps the site out of ChatGPT’s search answers. Checked 9 November 2026.