Who blocks AI · #1017 in the Majestic Million

robots.txt · checked 9 Nov 2026

Does videolan.org block AI crawlers?

No. videolan.org’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: www.videolan.org/robots.txt · 45 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	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	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.videolan.org/robots.txt · 45 lines

1# $Id$

3Sitemap: https://www.videolan.org/sitemap-https.xml

5User-agent: *

6Disallow: /pub

7Disallow: /removed

8Disallow: /doc/logs

9Disallow: /mirror.php

10Disallow: /mirror-geo.php

11Disallow: /mirror-geo-redirect.php

12Disallow: /vlc/download-skins2-go.php

13Disallow: /private

14Disallow: /~videolan/

15Disallow: /developers/vlc/po

16Disallow: /developers/vlc-branch/po

18# Do not crawl CVS and .svn directories

19User-agent: *

20Disallow: CVS

21Disallow: .svn

23# "This robot collects content from the Internet for the sole purpose of

24# helping educational institutions prevent plagiarism. [...] we compare

25# student papers against the content we find on the Internet to see if we

26# can find similarities." (http://www.turnitin.com/robot/crawlerinfo.html)

27# --> fuck off.

28User-Agent: TurnitinBot

29Disallow: /

31# "NameProtect engages in crawling activity in search of a wide range of

32# brand and other intellectual property violations that may be of interest

33# to our clients." (http://www.nameprotect.com/botinfo.html)

34# --> fuck off.

35User-Agent: NPBot

36Disallow: /

38# "iThenticate® is a new service we have developed to combat the piracy

39# of intellectual property and ensure the originality of written work for#

40# publishers, non-profit agencies, corporations, and newspapers."

41# (http://www.slysearch.com/)

42# --> fuck off.

43User-Agent: SlySearch

44Disallow: /

What do the bots actually get?

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

History

19 October 2026: first checked.
9 November 2026: robots.txt readable again.

Questions

Does videolan.org block GPTBot?

No. videolan.org’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 videolan.org block ClaudeBot?

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

Does videolan.org block Google-Extended?

No. videolan.org’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 videolan.org block PerplexityBot?

No. videolan.org’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 videolan.org?

Yes. videolan.org’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.