AI crawler access analysis. Checks robots.txt, meta tags, and HTTP headers to determine which AI crawlers can access the site. Provides a complete access map and recommendations for maximizing AI visibility while maintaining appropriate control.

AI Crawler Access Analysis Skill Purpose This skill analyzes a website's accessibility to AI crawlers the bots that AI companies use to discover, index, and train on web content. If AI crawlers are blocked, the site's content cannot appear in AI generated responses regardless of its quality. Crawler access is the foundational technical requirement for GEO. Key Insight As of early 2026, many websites inadvertently block AI crawlers through overly aggressive robots.txt rules, inherited from legacy SEO configurations. An Originality.ai 2025 study found that over 35% of the top 1,000 websites block at least one major AI crawler, and 5 10% block all AI crawlers. Blocking AI crawlers is the single fastest way to become invisible in AI generated search results. Complete AI Crawler Reference Tier 1: Critical for AI Search Visibility (RECOMMEND: ALLOW) These crawlers power the AI search products where users actively look for answers. Blocking them directly reduces your visibility in AI generated responses. GPTBot Operator: OpenAI User Agent: GPTBot Full User Agent String: Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; GPTBot/1.2; +https://openai.com/gptbot) Purpose: Fetches content for ChatGPT's web browsing, plugins, and search features. Content accessed by GPTBot may be used to improve OpenAI models. Impact of Blocking: Content will NOT appear in ChatGPT Search results or be accessible when users ask ChatGPT to browse the web. This is the highest impact AI crawler to allow. Recommendation: ALLOW ChatGPT has 300M+ weekly active users as of 2025. Blocking GPTBot removes your content from one of the largest AI search surfaces. OAI SearchBot Operator: OpenAI User Agent: OAI SearchBot Full User Agent String: Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; OAI SearchBot/1.0; +https://docs.openai.com/bots/overview) Purpose: Specifically powers ChatGPT's search feature. Unlike GPTBot, content accessed by OAI SearchBot is NOT used for model training only for live search results. Impact of Blocking: Content will not appear in ChatGPT's search results even if GPTBot is allowed. Recommendation: ALLOW This is a search only crawler with no training implications. There is no strategic reason to block it. ChatGPT User Operator: OpenAI User Agent: ChatGPT User Full User Agent String: Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ChatGPT User/1.0; +https://openai.com/bot) Purpose: Used when a ChatGPT user explicitly asks the model to visit a specific URL. Acts like a browser agent on behalf of the user. Impact of Blocking: ChatGPT cannot visit your pages when users ask it to read or summarize them. This prevents direct user initiated traffic. Recommendation: ALLOW Blocking this bot prevents users who are actively trying to engage with your content from accessing it through ChatGPT. ClaudeBot Operator: Anthropic User Agent: ClaudeBot Full User Agent String: ClaudeBot/1.0; +https://www.anthropic.com/claude bot Purpose: Fetches web content for Claude's features including web search, citations, and analysis tools. Impact of Blocking: Content will not be accessible to Claude for web search or when users ask Claude to analyze specific URLs. Recommendation: ALLOW Claude is a major AI assistant with growing market share. Blocking ClaudeBot reduces your AI search footprint. PerplexityBot Operator: Perplexity AI User Agent: PerplexityBot Full User Agent String: Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; PerplexityBot/1.0; +https://perplexity.ai/perplexitybot) Purpose: Powers Perplexity's AI search engine, which provides sourced answers with direct citations and links back to source pages. Impact of Blocking: Content will not appear in Perplexity search results. Perplexity is one of the best referral traffic sources among AI search products because it always displays source links. Recommendation: ALLOW Perplexity drives actual referral traffic and always attributes sources. High value AI crawler for publishers and businesses. Tier 2: Important for Broader AI Ecosystem (RECOMMEND: ALLOW) These crawlers serve large AI platforms or search ecosystems. Allowing them increases your content's reach. Google Extended Operator: Google User Agent: Google Extended Purpose: Controls whether Google uses your content for Gemini model training and AI Overviews improvement. CRITICAL NOTE: Blocking Google Extended does NOT affect your Google Search rankings or your appearance in Google Search results. That is controlled by the standard Googlebot. Impact of Blocking: Content may not be used for Gemini training or to improve AI Overviews. However, your content can still appear in AI Overviews based on standard search indexing. Recommendation: ALLOW Blocking provides minimal content protection upside while reducing your presence in Google's AI features. Since it does not affect standard search ranking, the only reason to block is philosophical objection to training data usage. GoogleOther Operator: Google User Agent: GoogleOther Purpose: Used by Google for various non search ranking purposes including research, one off crawls, and AI related data collection. Impact of Blocking: Minimal impact on search rankings. May reduce presence in Google's AI research and experimental features. Recommendation: ALLOW Low risk, moderate potential benefit for AI feature inclusion. Applebot Extended Operator: Apple User Agent: Applebot Extended Purpose: Used by Apple to train and improve Apple Intelligence features, Siri, and Apple's AI products. Separate from standard Applebot (which powers Siri search and Spotlight Suggestions). Impact of Blocking: Content may not be used in Apple Intelligence features. Standard Siri and Spotlight functionality is unaffected (controlled by Applebot). Recommendation: ALLOW Apple Intelligence is integrated into all Apple devices (2B+ active devices). Presence in Apple's AI features has growing strategic value. Amazonbot Operator: Amazon User Agent: Amazonbot Full User Agent String: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10 10 1) AppleWebKit/600.2.5 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/8.0.2 Safari/600.2.5 (compatible; Amazonbot/0.1; +https://developer.amazon.com/support/amazonbot) Purpose: Indexes content for Alexa answers and Amazon's AI features. Impact of Blocking: Content will not appear in Alexa voice responses or Amazon's AI powered search features. Recommendation: ALLOW Relevant for voice search optimization. Lower priority than Tier 1 crawlers but no downside to allowing. FacebookBot Operator: Meta User Agent: FacebookBot Purpose: Used by Meta for AI features across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Meta AI assistant. Impact of Blocking: Content may not be accessible to Meta AI. Link previews on Facebook/Instagram are handled by a different crawler and are unaffected. Recommendation: ALLOW Meta AI is embedded in apps with 3B+ combined users. Growing importance for AI visibility. Tier 3: Training Only Crawlers (ALLOW or BLOCK Based on Strategy) These crawlers are primarily used for AI model training rather than live search features. Blocking them does not affect AI search visibility. CCBot Operator: Common Crawl (nonprofit) User Agent: CCBot Full User Agent String: CCBot/2.0 (https://commoncrawl.org/faq/) Purpose: Builds the Common Crawl dataset, which is used as training data by many AI companies (Google, Meta, Stability AI, and others). Impact of Blocking: Content will not appear in future Common Crawl datasets. Does NOT affect any live AI search product. Recommendation: CONTEXT DEPENDENT Allow if you want maximum long term AI training presence. Block if you want to control training data usage. No impact on search visibility. anthropic ai Operator: Anthropic User Agent: anthropic ai Purpose: Used by Anthropic for AI safety research and Claude model training. Separate from ClaudeBot (which powers live features). Impact of Blocking: Content will not be used for Claude training. Does NOT affect Claude's live search or web browsing features (controlled by ClaudeBot). Recommendation: CONTEXT DEPENDENT Similar to CCBot. Allow for training presence, block for training data control. No impact on live AI search. Bytespider Operator: ByteDance User Agent: Bytespider Purpose: Used by ByteDance for various AI products including TikTok's AI features and Doubao (their ChatGPT competitor in China). Impact of Blocking: Content will not be used for ByteDance AI products. Minimal impact for Western market businesses. Recommendation: BLOCK for most Western businesses (aggressive crawling behavior reported, minimal search visibility benefit). ALLOW if targeting Chinese/Asian markets. cohere ai Operator: Cohere User Agent: cohere ai Purpose: Used by Cohere for model training. Cohere powers enterprise AI solutions and the Coral chat product. Impact of Blocking: Content will not be used for Cohere model training. Minimal direct consumer facing impact. Recommendation: CONTEXT DEPENDENT Low priority. Allow or block based on general training data stance. Recommendation Matrix Summary Crawler Tier Recommendation Reason GPTBot 1 ALLOW Powers ChatGPT Search (300M+ users) OAI SearchBot 1 ALLOW Search only, no training use ChatGPT User 1 ALLOW User initiated browsing ClaudeBot 1 ALLOW Claude web search and analysis PerplexityBot 1 ALLOW Best referral traffic AI search Google Extended 2 ALLOW Gemini features; no search rank impact GoogleOther 2 ALLOW Google AI research Applebot Extended 2 ALLOW Apple Intelligence (2B+ devices) Amazonbot 2 ALLOW Alexa and Amazon AI FacebookBot 2 ALLOW Meta AI (3B+ app users) CCBot 3 Context Training data only anthropic ai 3 Context Training data only Bytespider 3 BLOCK Aggressive crawler, low benefit cohere ai 3 Context Training data only Maximum AI Visibility Configuration (robots.txt) For sites wanting maximum AI search visibility: Analysis Procedure Step 1: Fetch and Parse robots.txt 1. Use WebFetch to retrieve [domain]/robots.txt . 2. Parse all User agent directives and their associated Allow/Disallow rules. 3. For each AI crawler in the reference list above: Check if there is a specific User agent block for that crawler Check if there is a wildcard ( User agent: ) block that would apply Determine effective access: Allowed , Blocked , or Not Mentioned (inherits wildcard rules) 4. Note any Crawl delay directives that may slow AI crawler access. 5. Check for Sitemap directives (AI crawlers use these for discovery). Step 2: Check Meta Robots Tags 1. For a sample of 5 10 key pages, fetch the HTML and check for: <meta name="robots" content="noindex" blocks all bots <meta name="robots" content="nofollow" prevents link following <meta name="robots" content="noai" emerging tag to block AI use <meta name="robots" content="noimageai" blocks AI image training Bot specific meta tags: <meta name="GPTBot" content="noindex" 2. Record any page level overrides of the robots.txt directives. Step 3: Check HTTP Headers 1. For the same sample pages, check response headers for: X Robots Tag: noindex HTTP header equivalent of meta noindex X Robots Tag: noai HTTP header to block AI use X Robots Tag: noimageai blocks AI image training Bot specific headers: X Robots Tag: GPTBot: no

geo-crawlers