AI Crawler Access: robots.txt Guide
AI Crawler Access: robots.txt Guide
Your robots.txt file controls which crawlers can access your site. In the age of AI search, getting this right is critical for visibility.
The AI Crawlers You Need to Know
| Crawler | Company | Purpose |
|---------|---------|---------|
| GPTBot | OpenAI | Powers ChatGPT search and training |
| Google-Extended | Google | AI Overviews and Gemini training |
| ClaudeBot | Anthropic | Claude AI responses |
| PerplexityBot | Perplexity | Perplexity search answers |
| Bytespider | ByteDance | TikTok search and AI features |
| CCBot | Common Crawl | Open dataset used by many AI models |
| Applebot-Extended | Apple | Apple Intelligence features |
Current State of AI Crawler Blocking
A surprising number of major websites block AI crawlers:
How to Allow AI Crawlers
Add these directives to your robots.txt:
```
Welcome AI crawlers for GEO/AEO visibility
User-agent: GPTBot
Allow: /
User-agent: Google-Extended
Allow: /
User-agent: ClaudeBot
Allow: /
User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /
User-agent: Applebot-Extended
Allow: /
Block sensitive paths
User-agent: *
Disallow: /admin/
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /app/
```
What to Block vs. Allow
Allow access to:
Block access to:
Testing Your Configuration
The Business Case
If you block AI crawlers, your content won't appear in:
That's billions of potential touchpoints you're missing. The decision to allow or block AI crawlers has direct revenue implications.
How SiteCrawlIQ Helps
SiteCrawlIQ's GEO audit automatically checks your robots.txt for all major AI crawler directives. It reports which crawlers are allowed, which are blocked, and flags any misconfigurations that could reduce your AI search visibility. The audit also checks for an llms.txt file, validates your schema markup coverage, and scores your content for citability by AI engines. You can run a GEO audit alongside your regular SEO crawl to get a complete picture of both traditional and AI search readiness in a single report. The citability score ranges from 0 to 100 and considers content structure, question-answer formatting, factual density, and entity coverage across your pages.