Which sites block Diffbot?

Diffbot · declared purpose: other declared use · latest sealed date 2026-08-07.

On 2026-08-07, 2,419 of the 61,552 panel domains that served a parseable robots.txt name diffbot explicitly. 2,155 of them (3.5% of parsed) disallow it from the entire site, 146 restrict it to part of the site, and 118 name it and allow it. The remaining 59,133 parsed domains do not mention it at all — their wildcard group governs it.

What the denominator is. On 2026-08-07 we attempted /robots.txt on 100,000 panel domains. 24,130 could not be reached at all (DNS failure, TLS failure, timeout, refused connection) and 14,318 answered with something other than a 200. Both of those groups have no observed AI-crawler policy, and neither is counted as allowing anything — an unreachable site is UNKNOWN, not permissive. Every crawler figure below is out of the 61,552 domains that returned a robots.txt we could parse on that date.

Blocks outright — the file has a group for that exact product token containing Disallow: / with no overriding allow. Partly restricts — a group exists with at least one non-empty Disallow, but not the whole site. Names & allows — a group exists with no effective Disallow. Everything else is not mentioned: the wildcard * group governs it, and wildcard effects are counted separately rather than folded in, because a site that blocks everything has not made a decision about any AI crawler in particular. Matching is exact and case-insensitive per RFC 9309 — never substring.

Get told when Diffbot change their AI crawler rules

Sites publish today's robots.txt and overwrite it — no archive, no history, no notification. We keep a dated daily copy. Leave your email and we'll send you what moved for Diffbot: who started blocking, who stopped, and on which day.

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What moved: Diffbot verdict changes

Counted domains whose robots.txt changed what Diffbot may do, between one sealed date and the previous one. Aggregate only — we do not publish which site.

Across the whole archive: 564 Diffbot verdict transitions, of which 307 moved TO a full block and 177 moved AWAY from one.

Sealed date	Verdict moved	Domains
2026-08-07	not mentioned → blocked outright	5
2026-08-07	blocked outright → not mentioned	2
2026-08-07	not mentioned → named and allowed	1
2026-08-07	partly restricted → not mentioned	1
2026-08-06	not mentioned → blocked outright	3
2026-08-06	blocked outright → not mentioned	3
2026-08-06	not mentioned → named and allowed	1
2026-08-05	blocked outright → not mentioned	3
2026-08-05	not mentioned → partly restricted	1
2026-08-05	not mentioned → blocked outright	1
2026-08-05	not mentioned → named and allowed	1
2026-08-05	named and allowed → not mentioned	1
2026-08-04	not mentioned → blocked outright	4
2026-08-04	not mentioned → partly restricted	1
2026-08-04	blocked outright → not mentioned	1
2026-08-03	not mentioned → named and allowed	1
2026-08-03	blocked outright → not mentioned	1
2026-08-03	named and allowed → not mentioned	1
2026-08-02	not mentioned → blocked outright	2
2026-08-02	blocked outright → not mentioned	2
2026-08-02	not mentioned → named and allowed	1
2026-08-01	not mentioned → blocked outright	5
2026-08-01	blocked outright → not mentioned	2
2026-07-31	blocked outright → not mentioned	20
2026-07-31	not mentioned → blocked outright	6
2026-07-31	partly restricted → named and allowed	1
2026-07-31	named and allowed → not mentioned	1
2026-07-30	not mentioned → blocked outright	2
2026-07-30	blocked outright → not mentioned	2
2026-07-30	not mentioned → partly restricted	1
2026-07-30	blocked outright → named and allowed	1
2026-07-29	not mentioned → blocked outright	6
2026-07-29	blocked outright → not mentioned	2
2026-07-29	not mentioned → partly restricted	1
2026-07-28	not mentioned → blocked outright	7
2026-07-28	blocked outright → not mentioned	2
2026-07-28	not mentioned → partly restricted	1
2026-07-28	partly restricted → not mentioned	1
2026-07-27	not mentioned → blocked outright	3
2026-07-27	blocked outright → not mentioned	2

Read this before quoting a trend. We hold 55 sealed daily snapshots between 2026-06-09 and 2026-08-07, out of 60 calendar days. 5 calendar day(s) inside that span have no collection run at all: 2026-06-11, 2026-06-12, 2026-06-19, 2026-07-04, 2026-07-15. Consecutive rows in every table below are consecutive SEALED dates, not consecutive days — where a gap falls, that row's diff covers more than 24 hours, and the span is printed with it. We do not interpolate across a day we did not collect.

Every sealed date

The denominator column is the number of panel domains that served a parseable robots.txt that day. It moves, so a raw count moves with it — compare the ratio, not the count.

Sealed date	Names it	Blocks outright	Partly restricts	Names & allows	Parsed that day
2026-08-07	2,419	2,155	146	118	61,552
2026-08-06	2,414	2,152	145	117	61,421
2026-08-05	2,410	2,148	146	116	61,527
2026-08-04	2,411	2,154	142	115	61,620
2026-08-03	2,411	2,151	144	116	61,533
2026-08-02	2,406	2,148	144	114	61,559
2026-08-01	2,408	2,151	142	115	61,326
2026-07-31	2,414	2,157	142	115	61,595
2026-07-30	2,426	2,171	141	114	61,444
2026-07-29	2,420	2,167	141	112	61,492
2026-07-28	2,414	2,162	139	113	61,562
2026-07-27	2,410	2,160	140	110	61,440
2026-07-26	2,411	2,158	140	113	61,573
2026-07-25	2,417	2,164	140	113	61,584
2026-07-24	2,404	2,152	140	112	61,576
2026-07-23	2,406	2,154	139	113	61,758
2026-07-22	2,408	2,157	139	112	61,744
2026-07-21	2,415	2,166	138	111	61,565
2026-07-20	2,417	2,167	138	112	61,665
2026-07-19	2,412	2,163	136	113	61,451
2026-07-18	2,419	2,169	137	113	61,782
2026-07-17	2,412	2,163	137	112	61,659
2026-07-16	2,403	2,154	137	112	61,526
2026-07-14	2,408	2,161	135	112	61,542
2026-07-13	2,403	2,156	135	112	61,448
2026-07-12	2,397	2,153	134	110	61,518
2026-07-11	2,399	2,153	134	112	61,526
2026-07-10	2,397	2,154	134	109	61,425
2026-07-09	2,397	2,155	134	108	61,495
2026-07-08	2,386	2,147	135	104	61,364
2026-07-07	2,389	2,149	135	105	61,491
2026-07-06	2,384	2,144	136	104	61,455
2026-07-05	2,383	2,145	134	104	61,562
2026-07-03	2,412	2,177	133	102	61,535
2026-07-02	2,416	2,178	135	103	61,553
2026-07-01	2,319	2,083	135	101	61,599
2026-06-30	2,320	2,085	135	100	61,590
2026-06-29	2,314	2,077	137	100	61,814
2026-06-28	2,308	2,074	136	98	61,835
2026-06-27	2,302	2,073	131	98	61,848
2026-06-26	2,310	2,076	136	98	61,851
2026-06-25	2,299	2,069	137	93	61,867
2026-06-24	2,300	2,073	135	92	61,660
2026-06-23	2,312	2,083	135	94	61,877
2026-06-22	2,302	2,071	137	94	61,911
2026-06-21	2,296	2,066	137	93	61,905
2026-06-20	2,291	2,062	135	94	61,754
2026-06-18	2,289	2,064	133	92	61,805
2026-06-17	2,300	2,073	135	92	61,952
2026-06-16	2,285	2,065	129	91	61,645
2026-06-15	2,292	2,071	131	90	61,715
2026-06-14	2,288	2,066	133	89	61,697
2026-06-13	2,287	2,065	133	89	61,648
2026-06-10	2,267	2,044	132	91	61,489
2026-06-09	2,259	2,037	132	90	61,599

Why you will not find a robots.txt file here. These pages render mechanical verdicts and aggregate diffs, never a fetched body. Site operators leave contact addresses in robots.txt comments — on the 2026-08-06 snapshot 2,200 of the distinct bodies we fetched contain an email-shaped string — and republishing bodies would republish those. Nothing on this surface identifies an individual site, either: every figure is a count.

Compiled from each site's own published /robots.txt, /ai.txt, /llms.txt and /.well-known/tdmrep.json, fetched daily over a frozen 100,000-domain research panel (source list: Tranco; no Tranco rank is republished here). Verdicts are mechanical readings of what those files say under RFC 9309 grouping with exact product-token matching — they are not legal advice, not a statement about any site's intentions, and not a claim about what any crawler actually did. A robots.txt is a request, not an access control. Figures are provided for informational purposes only and carry no warranty of accuracy or completeness.

AI crawler policy home · What changed · How this is collected · US Tech Automations.