AI crawler policy › domain suffix

AI crawler blocking on .chat sites

Latest sealed date 2026-08-07.

The panel contains 39 .chat domains. On 2026-08-07, 29 of them served a robots.txt we could parse; 3 could not be reached at all and have no observed policy. Of the parsed ones, 11 (37.9%) name at least one tracked AI crawler and 4 (13.8%) block at least one site-wide. 1 block every crawler via the wildcard group, counted separately.

In the latest sealed reading for .chat on 2026-08-07, 22 tracked crawler tokens were named by at least one observed file: Amazonbot: 10 named, 3 blocked site-wide; ClaudeBot: 10 named, 3 blocked site-wide; CCBot: 5 named, 4 blocked site-wide; Applebot-Extended: 4 named, 3 blocked site-wide; Bytespider: 4 named, 3 blocked site-wide; Google-Extended: 4 named, 3 blocked site-wide; GPTBot: 4 named, 3 blocked site-wide; meta-externalagent: 4 named, 3 blocked site-wide; anthropic-ai: 1 named, 0 blocked site-wide; ChatGPT-User: 1 named, 0 blocked site-wide; Claude-SearchBot: 1 named, 0 blocked site-wide; Claude-User: 1 named, 0 blocked site-wide; Claude-Web: 1 named, 0 blocked site-wide; cohere-ai: 1 named, 0 blocked site-wide; cohere-training-data-crawler: 1 named, 0 blocked site-wide; DuckAssistBot: 1 named, 0 blocked site-wide; FacebookBot: 1 named, 0 blocked site-wide; meta-externalfetcher: 1 named, 0 blocked site-wide; MistralAI-User: 1 named, 0 blocked site-wide; OAI-SearchBot: 1 named, 0 blocked site-wide; Perplexity-User: 1 named, 0 blocked site-wide; PerplexityBot: 1 named, 0 blocked site-wide. Each entry keeps the named count before the fully-blocked count. A tracked token absent from the list had zero observed mentions; the counts describe file declarations, not crawler behavior.

What "suffix" means here. The final DNS label, not the effective top-level domain. A .co.uk site is counted under .uk. Computing a true effective TLD needs the Public Suffix List, which this surface does not ship, and approximating one would put a wrong denominator under every figure on this page.

Every tracked crawler on .chat

CrawlerOperatorNames itBlocks outright% of parsed
AmazonbotAmazon10310.3%
ClaudeBotAnthropic10310.3%
CCBotCommon Crawl5413.8%
Applebot-ExtendedApple4310.3%
BytespiderByteDance4310.3%
Google-ExtendedGoogle4310.3%
GPTBotOpenAI4310.3%
meta-externalagentMeta4310.3%
anthropic-aiAnthropic100.0%
ChatGPT-UserOpenAI100.0%
Claude-SearchBotAnthropic100.0%
Claude-UserAnthropic100.0%
Claude-WebAnthropic100.0%
cohere-aiCohere100.0%
cohere-training-data-crawlerCohere100.0%
DuckAssistBotDuckDuckGo100.0%
FacebookBotMeta100.0%
meta-externalfetcherMeta100.0%
MistralAI-UserMistral100.0%
OAI-SearchBotOpenAI100.0%
Perplexity-UserPerplexity100.0%
PerplexityBotPerplexity100.0%

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.

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14 newest sealed readings for .chat

For each date, the table keeps the panel count beside the parseable robots.txt denominator, the sites naming or blocking a tracked AI crawler, and wildcard blocks. Unreachable or unusable responses are excluded rather than treated as permissive. These are aggregate observations of published files, not crawler behavior or the intent behind a declaration.

Across the 14 sealed readings shown for .chat, the newest recorded 29 domains publishing a parseable robots.txt, against an observed low of 28 on 2026-07-29 and a high of 29 on 2026-08-07. In the newest reading, 11 named at least one tracked AI crawler (range 11 on 2026-07-25 to 11 on 2026-08-07), while 4 blocked at least one (range 4 on 2026-07-25 to 4 on 2026-08-07). These are aggregate observations of published files. A movement can reflect changed fetch coverage as well as a changed file; it does not describe motive or crawler behavior.

Sealed datePanel domainsParsedNames anyBlocks anyWildcard block
2026-08-0739291141
2026-08-0639291141
2026-08-0539291141
2026-08-0439291141
2026-08-0339291141
2026-08-0239291141
2026-08-0139291141
2026-07-3139291141
2026-07-3039291141
2026-07-2939281141
2026-07-2839291141
2026-07-2739291141
2026-07-2639291141
2026-07-2539291141
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.

Observed AI-crawler verdict changes on .chat

Across the sealed archive, 18 crawler-verdict transitions were attributed to .chat domains on 4 sealed change dates. The newest aggregate movements are listed below; no domain name or fetched file body is published.

Sealed dateCrawlerVerdict movedDomains
2026-07-21Amazonbotblocked outright → not mentioned1
2026-07-21Applebot-Extendedblocked outright → not mentioned1
2026-07-21Bytespiderblocked outright → not mentioned1
2026-07-21CCBotblocked outright → not mentioned1
2026-07-21ClaudeBotblocked outright → not mentioned1
2026-07-21Google-Extendedblocked outright → not mentioned1
2026-07-21GPTBotblocked outright → not mentioned1
2026-07-21meta-externalagentblocked outright → not mentioned1
2026-07-20meta-externalagentpartly restricted → blocked outright1
2026-07-19Amazonbotpartly restricted → named and allowed1
2026-07-19Applebot-Extendedpartly restricted → named and allowed1
2026-07-19Bytespiderpartly restricted → named and allowed1
2026-07-19CCBotpartly restricted → named and allowed1
2026-07-19ClaudeBotpartly restricted → named and allowed1
2026-07-19Google-Extendedpartly restricted → named and allowed1
2026-07-19GPTBotpartly restricted → named and allowed1
2026-07-19meta-externalagentpartly restricted → named and allowed1
2026-07-06meta-externalagentblocked outright → partly restricted1

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.

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