AI crawler policy › domain suffix

AI crawler blocking on .com sites

Latest sealed date 2026-09-06.

The panel contains 420 .com domains. On 2026-09-06, 353 of them served a robots.txt we could parse; 15 could not be reached at all and have no observed policy. Of the parsed ones, 155 (43.9%) name at least one tracked AI crawler and 124 (35.1%) block at least one site-wide. 22 block every crawler via the wildcard group, counted separately.

In the latest sealed reading for .com on 2026-09-06, 30 tracked crawler tokens were named by at least one observed file: GPTBot: 121 named, 87 blocked site-wide; ClaudeBot: 113 named, 87 blocked site-wide; CCBot: 111 named, 98 blocked site-wide; PerplexityBot: 105 named, 70 blocked site-wide; Bytespider: 103 named, 89 blocked site-wide; Google-Extended: 100 named, 72 blocked site-wide; meta-externalagent: 88 named, 72 blocked site-wide; Amazonbot: 83 named, 67 blocked site-wide; Applebot-Extended: 83 named, 69 blocked site-wide; anthropic-ai: 82 named, 69 blocked site-wide; ChatGPT-User: 82 named, 49 blocked site-wide; cohere-ai: 78 named, 68 blocked site-wide; Diffbot: 76 named, 69 blocked site-wide; omgili: 76 named, 74 blocked site-wide; Claude-Web: 72 named, 61 blocked site-wide; FacebookBot: 70 named, 61 blocked site-wide; OAI-SearchBot: 70 named, 31 blocked site-wide; omgilibot: 63 named, 60 blocked site-wide; Claude-User: 59 named, 38 blocked site-wide; Claude-SearchBot: 58 named, 35 blocked site-wide; Perplexity-User: 58 named, 36 blocked site-wide; Timpibot: 52 named, 51 blocked site-wide; ImagesiftBot: 46 named, 44 blocked site-wide; DuckAssistBot: 45 named, 34 blocked site-wide; meta-externalfetcher: 45 named, 37 blocked site-wide; AI2Bot: 43 named, 39 blocked site-wide; MistralAI-User: 41 named, 32 blocked site-wide; cohere-training-data-crawler: 37 named, 33 blocked site-wide; PanguBot: 34 named, 31 blocked site-wide; Google-CloudVertexBot: 25 named, 20 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 .com

CrawlerOperatorNames itBlocks outright% of parsed
GPTBotOpenAI1218724.6%
ClaudeBotAnthropic1138724.6%
CCBotCommon Crawl1119827.8%
PerplexityBotPerplexity1057019.8%
BytespiderByteDance1038925.2%
Google-ExtendedGoogle1007220.4%
meta-externalagentMeta887220.4%
AmazonbotAmazon836719.0%
Applebot-ExtendedApple836919.5%
anthropic-aiAnthropic826919.5%
ChatGPT-UserOpenAI824913.9%
cohere-aiCohere786819.3%
DiffbotDiffbot766919.5%
omgiliWebz.io767421.0%
Claude-WebAnthropic726117.3%
FacebookBotMeta706117.3%
OAI-SearchBotOpenAI70318.8%
omgilibotWebz.io636017.0%
Claude-UserAnthropic593810.8%
Claude-SearchBotAnthropic58359.9%
Perplexity-UserPerplexity583610.2%
TimpibotTimpi525114.4%
ImagesiftBotImageSift464412.5%
DuckAssistBotDuckDuckGo45349.6%
meta-externalfetcherMeta453710.5%
AI2BotAi2433911.0%
MistralAI-UserMistral41329.1%
cohere-training-data-crawlerCohere37339.3%
PanguBotHuawei34318.8%
Google-CloudVertexBotGoogle25205.7%

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 .com 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 .com: who started blocking, who stopped, and on which day.

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14 newest sealed readings for .com

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 .com, the newest recorded 353 domains publishing a parseable robots.txt, against an observed low of 353 on 2026-09-06 and a high of 29,224 on 2026-08-24. In the newest reading, 155 named at least one tracked AI crawler (range 155 on 2026-09-06 to 6,898 on 2026-08-24), while 124 blocked at least one (range 124 on 2026-09-06 to 5,251 on 2026-08-24). 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
2026-09-0642035315512422
2026-09-0534,65524,4226,3304,942442
2026-09-0434,34124,2876,2914,911425
2026-09-0335,05424,6976,3924,984432
2026-09-0235,45825,0516,4705,040436
2026-09-0134,75524,5606,3564,960434
2026-08-3133,03323,2436,0744,734417
2026-08-3033,48923,5786,1404,784414
2026-08-2933,49023,5826,1424,783421
2026-08-2833,48923,5966,1414,785422
2026-08-2733,48923,5836,1324,778420
2026-08-2633,19523,3676,0764,728418
2026-08-251,15093040130956
2026-08-2445,70729,2246,8985,2511,100
Read this before quoting a trend. We hold 84 sealed daily snapshots between 2026-06-09 and 2026-09-06, out of 90 calendar days. 6 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, 2026-08-08. 2026-08-25, 2026-09-06 sealed a partial pass — fewer rows than a full run — so figures for that date cover part of the panel only. 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 .com

Across the sealed archive, 24,957 crawler-verdict transitions were attributed to .com domains on 83 sealed change dates. The newest aggregate movements are listed below; no domain name or fetched file body is published.

Sealed dateCrawlerVerdict movedDomains
2026-09-06CCBotblocked outright → not mentioned1
2026-09-06Google-Extendedblocked outright → not mentioned1
2026-09-06GPTBotblocked outright → not mentioned1
2026-09-05Bytespidernot mentioned → blocked outright5
2026-09-05CCBotnot mentioned → blocked outright5
2026-09-05Google-Extendednot mentioned → blocked outright5
2026-09-05ClaudeBotnot mentioned → blocked outright4
2026-09-05GPTBotnot mentioned → blocked outright4
2026-09-05meta-externalagentnot mentioned → blocked outright4
2026-09-05Perplexity-Usernot mentioned → named and allowed3
2026-09-05Amazonbotnot mentioned → blocked outright2
2026-09-05Applebot-Extendednot mentioned → blocked outright2
2026-09-05Bytespiderblocked outright → not mentioned2
2026-09-05Claude-SearchBotnot mentioned → named and allowed2
2026-09-05Claude-Usernot mentioned → named and allowed2
2026-09-05ClaudeBotnot mentioned → partly restricted2
2026-09-05ClaudeBotblocked outright → not mentioned2
2026-09-05Google-Extendednot mentioned → partly restricted2
2026-09-05GPTBotnot mentioned → partly restricted2
2026-09-05OAI-SearchBotnot mentioned → named and allowed2
2026-09-05PerplexityBotnot mentioned → blocked outright2
2026-09-05Amazonbotnot mentioned → partly restricted1
2026-09-05Amazonbotblocked outright → not mentioned1
2026-09-05anthropic-ainot mentioned → blocked outright1
2026-09-05anthropic-aipartly restricted → not mentioned1
2026-09-05anthropic-aiblocked outright → not mentioned1
2026-09-05Applebot-Extendednot mentioned → partly restricted1
2026-09-05Applebot-Extendedblocked outright → not mentioned1
2026-09-05Bytespidernot mentioned → partly restricted1
2026-09-05CCBotnot mentioned → named and allowed1
2026-09-05CCBotblocked outright → not mentioned1
2026-09-05ChatGPT-Usernot mentioned → partly restricted1
2026-09-05ChatGPT-Usernot mentioned → blocked outright1
2026-09-05ChatGPT-Usernot mentioned → named and allowed1
2026-09-05Claude-SearchBotnot mentioned → blocked outright1
2026-09-05Claude-Usernot mentioned → blocked outright1
2026-09-05Claude-Webnot mentioned → partly restricted1
2026-09-05Claude-Webnot mentioned → blocked outright1
2026-09-05Claude-Webpartly restricted → not mentioned1
2026-09-05Claude-Webblocked outright → not mentioned1

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.