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Blocking a bot whose name contains “AI” does not necessarily stop AI training—and it can interfere with search discovery instead. Google and OpenAI document separate controls for some of these purposes: identify the exact crawler and goal before changing robots.txt.
Which AI crawlers should you block?
There is no universal rule for AI crawlers: providers assign different jobs to different bots, and the documentation below covers Google and OpenAI rather than every provider. First decide what you want to change: search access, potential training use, user-triggered fetching, or access to private material. Then match that goal to the provider’s documented control.
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| Provider and robots.txt token | Documented purpose | Search implication |
|---|---|---|
| Googlebot | Google Search crawling, including access for AI features in Search. Google’s crawler documentation and AI features guidance describe this role. | Blocking can affect Search access and visibility, including AI-powered Search experiences. |
| Google-Extended | A standalone robots.txt control token—not a separate HTTP user-agent string—for specified Gemini model training and grounding uses. Google’s Google-Extended documentation explains its scope. | Google says it does not affect inclusion in Google Search or serve as a Search ranking signal. |
| OAI-SearchBot | OpenAI uses it to surface websites in ChatGPT search features. See OpenAI’s crawler documentation. | It is OpenAI’s documented search-discovery control; updates may take about 24 hours to affect its search systems. |
| GPTBot | OpenAI uses it to crawl content that may be used to train foundation models. See OpenAI’s crawler documentation. | OpenAI documents this separately from OAI-SearchBot; the settings are independent. |
| ChatGPT-User | Fetches pages in response to certain user actions. OpenAI says this is not automatic web crawling and notes robots.txt may not apply to these requests. See OpenAI’s crawler documentation. | It is not the control for ChatGPT Search visibility. |
These names are not interchangeable. In particular, Google-Extended is a robots.txt token, not a user-agent string you should expect to see as a distinct crawler in request logs.
How do you stop training use without blocking search?
Google separates Googlebot’s Search access from Google-Extended’s documented controls for certain Gemini training and grounding uses. Google states: “Google-Extended does not impact a site’s inclusion in Google Search nor is it used as a ranking signal in Google Search.” If you want to restrict those Google-Extended uses while keeping Search access, target that token rather than blocking Googlebot. The exact effects are limited to the uses Google documents.
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OpenAI says OAI-SearchBot and GPTBot settings are independent. You can allow OAI-SearchBot for ChatGPT search discovery while disallowing GPTBot for crawling content that may be used for model training. Conversely, blocking OAI-SearchBot can affect search discovery without being the same setting as GPTBot.
Robots.txt is a request to compliant crawlers, not a technical privacy barrier. These distinctions also do not establish how every AI provider handles its crawlers; check each provider’s own current documentation before applying a rule.
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How to diagnose a robots.txt rule before changing it
- Define the outcome. Decide whether you want to preserve search visibility, restrict a documented training use, reduce crawler access, remove a page from search results, or keep material private. These goals may require different controls.
- Identify the exact token. Check the provider’s current documentation and the user-agent group in your robots.txt file. Do not infer purpose from “AI” in a name. A name in server logs is not proof of identity: user-agent strings can be spoofed. Google recommends verifying Google crawlers with reverse DNS or its published IP ranges in its Googlebot verification guidance.
- Check the file at the affected address. Robots.txt rules apply to the host, protocol, and port where the file is hosted. Confirm that you are inspecting the relevant site variant and that the intended user-agent group matches. Google’s robots.txt guidance says its parser selects the most specific matching user-agent group.
- Allow time for the change to be seen. Google generally caches robots.txt for up to 24 hours and may cache it longer if it cannot refresh the file. OpenAI says changes to OAI-SearchBot access may take about 24 hours to affect its search systems. A saved file does not guarantee an immediate change in crawler behavior.
- Use the right control for indexing or privacy. If you want Google to remove a page from Search, allow Googlebot to fetch it so it can see a supported
noindexdirective. A disallowed URL may still be indexed if Google discovers it elsewhere. For confidential content, require authentication rather than relying on robots.txt. See Google’s guide to controlling indexing.
Will robots.txt keep a page private or remove it from Google?
No. Robots.txt tells compliant crawlers what they may crawl; it is not a reliable privacy wall, and blocking a URL does not guarantee that it will disappear from search results. Google may index a disallowed URL discovered through other pages or links, even if it cannot crawl the content.
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- To request that Google exclude a crawlable page from Search, use a supported
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