An AI crawler is an automated web client used by an AI-related service to fetch web pages or other resources. The term covers different activities: collecting material that may be used for model training, finding pages for an AI search feature, or fetching a page after a person asks an assistant to inspect it. The name alone does not tell you which activity is taking place.
What an AI crawler does—and what the label does not tell you
A crawler sends requests to a website, much like a browser does, but automatically. A site may see requests identified by a user-agent name associated with an AI company or product. Depending on the service, those requests may support search discovery, retrieval, training-related collection, or a user-triggered page visit.
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Those purposes are not interchangeable. A crawler’s name or presence in server logs does not establish that a particular page was used to train a model. Check the vendor’s documentation for the specific crawler and purpose, and treat published names and roles as subject to change.
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| Name | Documented or listed role | What to bear in mind |
|---|---|---|
| GPTBot | OpenAI says it crawls content that may be used to train its generative AI foundation models. | OpenAI describes blocking GPTBot as indicating that content should not be used for that training purpose. That is separate from controlling ChatGPT search. |
| OAI-SearchBot | OpenAI says it is used to surface websites in ChatGPT search features. | Opting out can prevent a site from appearing in ChatGPT search answers, although navigational links may still appear. |
| ChatGPT-User | OpenAI says this is used for certain visits initiated by a user in ChatGPT or a custom GPT. | It is not the automatic crawler used for search inclusion. OpenAI notes that robots.txt may not apply to these user-initiated actions. |
| Google-Extended | A Google robots.txt product token for controls over certain uses of crawled content for future Gemini training and grounding. | It is not a separate HTTP user-agent string. Google says it does not affect inclusion in Google Search or act as a Search ranking signal. |
| ClaudeBot | Listed as an Anthropic crawler in Cloudflare’s AI crawler reference. | The listing alone does not establish detailed use or policy behavior; consult Anthropic’s current first-party bot documentation for those details. |
| PerplexityBot | Listed as a Perplexity AI search crawler in Cloudflare’s reference. | Check Perplexity’s current first-party documentation for the exact scope and effect of blocking. |
| Bytespider | Listed with ByteDance in Cloudflare’s reference. | A claimed user-agent string is not proof that a request is authentic. |
| Meta-ExternalAgent | Listed with Meta in Cloudflare’s reference. | Treat this as a directory entry, not a complete account of Meta crawler names or their history. |
This is an illustrative list, not a permanent or complete directory. Names, product mappings, and stated uses can change.
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What robots.txt can—and cannot—control
A robots.txt file publishes instructions for crawlers that choose to follow them. The IETF’s Robots Exclusion Protocol standard, RFC 9309, is explicit: “These rules are not a form of access authorization.” A robots.txt rule is therefore not a lock, and it should not be used to protect confidential or private material.
For example, a site could request that GPTBot not crawl any path with a rule like this:
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User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /That example expresses a crawl restriction for the named token; it does not prevent all bots from visiting the site, guarantee compliance, or secure the pages. Use authentication, permissions, or another server-side access control for content that must remain private.
Choose the exact product token for the purpose you want to control. OpenAI documents separate robots.txt controls for GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot. Google-Extended is also a robots.txt token, but Google says its requests use existing Google user-agent strings rather than a separate Google-Extended HTTP user-agent.
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How to decide which AI crawlers to allow or block
- Define the outcome. Decide whether you want to affect training-related use, visibility in an AI search product, general request volume, or access to private material. These are different problems and may require different controls.
- Identify the exact crawler or token. Compare the vendor’s stated purpose with the user-agent or robots.txt product token. Do not assume that blocking one name controls every service from the same company.
- Check the consequence of opting out. A rule intended to restrict collection may also affect discovery in a search product if it targets that product’s crawler. OpenAI, for example, documents distinct roles and controls for GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot.
- Choose the enforcement layer. Use robots.txt to publish crawl preferences. Use a CDN or web application firewall to manage requests at the network edge, and server-side authentication or permissions when access must actually be restricted.
- Verify what is reaching the site. Review server or CDN logs and the relevant vendor guidance. User-agent strings can be copied or spoofed, so a string in a log is not by itself reliable proof of a crawler’s identity.
There is no universal allow-all or block-all setting that suits every site: the effect depends on the vendor, product token, and outcome you want.
Crawl controls are not the same as search indexing controls
robots.txt controls crawler access requests; Google’s robots meta tag and X-Robots-Tag instructions control how Google presents accessible content in Search. A page-level meta directive only works if Googlebot can fetch the page and read it. If robots.txt blocks that fetch, Googlebot cannot read the page’s meta directive there.
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Google says Google-Extended does not affect a site’s inclusion in Google Search or serve as a Search ranking signal. It is a separate control for certain Gemini training and grounding uses, not a substitute for Google Search indexing directives.
When a robots.txt change takes effect
Allow time for the relevant systems to pick up a change. OpenAI says an update to robots.txt may take approximately 24 hours to affect its search systems. That timing is vendor-specific, not a general guarantee for every crawler or service.
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