AI crawler policy › changes

Which sites changed their AI crawler rules, and when?

Every sealed date from 2026-06-09 to 2026-08-07.

This is the page that cannot be reproduced from the live web. Sites overwrite robots.txt in place; there is no published history and no notification. Across 55 sealed dates we counted 174,288 robots.txt body changes on 18,627 distinct domains. Of those, 4,346 changed what a tracked AI crawler may do, on 2,793 domains, producing 31,194 individual crawler-verdict transitions.
A changed file is not a changed policy. Most robots.txt edits add a sitemap line, reorder a block or adjust a non-AI crawler. Those two columns are counted separately below and never merged: reporting body edits as AI-policy changes would overstate the headline by roughly the ratio between them.
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.

Change per sealed date

"Compared" is the number of domains that served a parseable robots.txt on BOTH dates — a domain that was unreachable on either date cannot be diffed and is excluded from both columns rather than counted as unchanged.

Sealed dateCompared againstDays spannedDomains comparedFile changedAI verdict changed
2026-08-072026-08-06161,0573,206106
2026-08-062026-08-05160,9473,16168
2026-08-052026-08-04161,1543,19361
2026-08-042026-08-03161,1673,20783
2026-08-032026-08-02161,1622,84149
2026-08-022026-08-01161,0332,61941
2026-08-012026-07-31161,0273,02752
2026-07-312026-07-30161,1333,28886
2026-07-302026-07-29160,9793,34481
2026-07-292026-07-28161,0963,30394
2026-07-282026-07-27161,0213,24473
2026-07-272026-07-26161,0642,83254
2026-07-262026-07-25161,2602,54632
2026-07-252026-07-24161,1292,90043
2026-07-242026-07-23161,2703,46395
2026-07-232026-07-22161,4433,48163
2026-07-222026-07-21161,2303,391101
2026-07-212026-07-20161,1513,46792
2026-07-202026-07-19161,0972,81748
2026-07-192026-07-18161,2052,55028
2026-07-182026-07-17161,3712,98967
2026-07-172026-07-16161,1523,590115
2026-07-162026-07-14261,1593,683157
2026-07-142026-07-13161,1703,24193
2026-07-132026-07-12161,1892,87141
2026-07-122026-07-11161,2672,58533
2026-07-112026-07-10161,1262,78458
2026-07-102026-07-09161,0683,33985
2026-07-092026-07-08160,9863,24785
2026-07-082026-07-07160,9313,34390
2026-07-072026-07-06161,1003,25396
2026-07-062026-07-05161,1782,72346
2026-07-052026-07-03261,1632,89093
2026-07-032026-07-02161,1223,392169
2026-07-022026-07-01161,1767,238179
2026-07-012026-06-30161,2403,38582
2026-06-302026-06-29161,2553,57987
2026-06-292026-06-28161,4942,90961
2026-06-282026-06-27161,5492,67734
2026-06-272026-06-26161,4902,98959
2026-06-262026-06-25161,4983,31771
2026-06-252026-06-24161,3063,456157
2026-06-242026-06-23161,3173,38972
2026-06-232026-06-22161,5283,26374
2026-06-222026-06-21161,5922,93750
2026-06-212026-06-20161,4962,49222
2026-06-202026-06-18261,2413,580152
2026-06-182026-06-17161,4143,478153
2026-06-172026-06-16161,3253,43286
2026-06-162026-06-15161,3553,46081
2026-06-152026-06-14161,3922,90556
2026-06-142026-06-13161,3362,59539
2026-06-132026-06-10360,9654,250202
2026-06-102026-06-09161,0823,14751

Get told when the sites you care about 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 the sites you care about: who started blocking, who stopped, and on which day.

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Most recent verdict movements

Aggregate counts of how many domains moved a given crawler from one verdict to another, newest sealed date first. We do not publish which domain: a mechanical verdict attached to a named site reads as a claim about that site's intent, and we observed a file, not an intent.

Sealed dateCrawlerVerdict movedDomains
2026-08-07meta-externalagentnot mentioned → blocked outright34
2026-08-07CCBotnot mentioned → blocked outright34
2026-08-07Bytespidernot mentioned → blocked outright33
2026-08-07Google-Extendednot mentioned → blocked outright31
2026-08-07ClaudeBotnot mentioned → blocked outright31
2026-08-07Applebot-Extendednot mentioned → blocked outright31
2026-08-07GPTBotnot mentioned → blocked outright30
2026-08-07Amazonbotnot mentioned → blocked outright30
2026-08-07GPTBotblocked outright → not mentioned16
2026-08-07Google-Extendedblocked outright → not mentioned13
2026-08-07CCBotblocked outright → not mentioned13
2026-08-07PerplexityBotnot mentioned → named and allowed11
2026-08-07GPTBotnot mentioned → named and allowed11
2026-08-07ClaudeBotblocked outright → not mentioned11
2026-08-07Amazonbotblocked outright → not mentioned11
2026-08-07Google-Extendednot mentioned → named and allowed10
2026-08-07ChatGPT-Usernot mentioned → named and allowed10
2026-08-07meta-externalagentblocked outright → not mentioned9
2026-08-07ClaudeBotnot mentioned → named and allowed9
2026-08-07Bytespiderblocked outright → not mentioned9
2026-08-07Applebot-Extendedblocked outright → not mentioned9
2026-08-07ChatGPT-Usernot mentioned → partly restricted8
2026-08-07PerplexityBotnot mentioned → partly restricted7
2026-08-07Perplexity-Usernot mentioned → partly restricted7
2026-08-07OAI-SearchBotnot mentioned → partly restricted7
2026-08-07OAI-SearchBotnot mentioned → named and allowed7
2026-08-07cohere-ainot mentioned → blocked outright6
2026-08-07Claude-Webblocked outright → not mentioned6
2026-08-07PerplexityBotblocked outright → not mentioned5
2026-08-07Perplexity-Usernot mentioned → named and allowed5
2026-08-07Google-Extendednot mentioned → partly restricted5
2026-08-07Diffbotnot mentioned → blocked outright5
2026-08-07anthropic-ainot mentioned → blocked outright5
2026-08-07Amazonbotnot mentioned → partly restricted5
2026-08-07omgilibotnot mentioned → blocked outright4
2026-08-07omgilinot mentioned → blocked outright4
2026-08-07OAI-SearchBotpartly restricted → not mentioned4
2026-08-07OAI-SearchBotnamed and allowed → partly restricted4
2026-08-07meta-externalagentnot mentioned → named and allowed4
2026-08-07ImagesiftBotnot mentioned → blocked outright4
2026-08-07GPTBotnot mentioned → partly restricted4
2026-08-07GPTBotnamed and allowed → partly restricted4
2026-08-07ClaudeBotnot mentioned → partly restricted4
2026-08-07Claude-Webnot mentioned → blocked outright4
2026-08-07Claude-Webnot mentioned → named and allowed4
2026-08-07Claude-Usernot mentioned → partly restricted4
2026-08-07Claude-SearchBotnot mentioned → partly restricted4
2026-08-07ChatGPT-Userblocked outright → not mentioned4
2026-08-07ChatGPT-Usernamed and allowed → partly restricted4
2026-08-07CCBotnot mentioned → named and allowed4
2026-08-07Applebot-Extendednot mentioned → partly restricted4
2026-08-07Applebot-Extendednot mentioned → named and allowed4
2026-08-07anthropic-ainot mentioned → named and allowed4
2026-08-07Amazonbotnot mentioned → named and allowed4
2026-08-07PerplexityBotnot mentioned → blocked outright3
2026-08-07PerplexityBotpartly restricted → not mentioned3
2026-08-07PerplexityBotnamed and allowed → partly restricted3
2026-08-07meta-externalfetchernot mentioned → partly restricted3
2026-08-07Google-Extendednamed and allowed → not mentioned3
2026-08-07FacebookBotnot mentioned → blocked outright3
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.