AI crawlers are now a normal part of technical SEO. Alongside classic search bots (Googlebot, Bingbot), sites are seeing more traffic from model-related agents such as ClaudeBot, GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, and PerplexityBot.
The challenge is simple: do you want these systems to access your content, or not?
This guide explains how to decide, and how to implement a clean policy in robots.txt without accidentally harming your core search traffic.
What AI Crawlers Actually Do
Not all AI-related user agents do the same thing. In practice, they usually fall into three buckets:
- Crawlers that fetch pages for indexing or training-related pipelines.
- Crawlers that support live retrieval for AI answers and citations.
- Extended-control directives that signal usage preferences for AI features.
For most websites, the operational question is still binary: allow or disallow.
Should You Block AI Crawlers?
There is no universal answer. Use business goals:
Usually block if:
- You publish proprietary content that you do not want reused in AI-generated outputs.
- You run a subscription or paywalled content business and want tighter control.
- You are seeing heavy crawl load with little referral value from AI platforms.
Usually allow if:
- You want visibility and citations in AI assistants.
- You publish educational content, comparison pages, or thought leadership.
- You are actively investing in AI search optimization.
For many brands, allowing selective access is now part of demand generation. If your content cannot be fetched, it cannot be cited.
Safe Robots.txt Pattern
If your policy is to block common AI crawlers, add explicit blocks like:
User-agent: ClaudeBot
Disallow: /
User-agent: anthropic-ai
Disallow: /
User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Disallow: /
User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Disallow: /
User-agent: PerplexityBot
Disallow: /
User-agent: Perplexity-User
Disallow: /
Then keep your normal baseline section for everything else:
User-agent: *
Disallow:
This structure is clear, auditable, and easy to update as policies change.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Blocking
User-agent: *by accident.
If you setDisallow: /under the wildcard group, you can remove your entire site from standard crawling.Mixing contradictory rules without intent.
Set your specific AI-agent rules explicitly, then define a clear wildcard baseline.Forgetting crawl monitoring after policy changes.
Use logs and crawl stats to confirm your directives are being respected.Treating robots.txt as security.
robots.txtis a crawl directive, not an access control mechanism. Sensitive data should be protected at the server/application layer.
A Practical Policy Framework
Use a simple review framework every quarter:
Business value: Are AI platforms sending qualified traffic or branded searches?Content risk: Is your content highly sensitive or commercially unique?Infrastructure cost: Is crawler load causing measurable performance issues?Brand strategy: Do you want broader AI mention visibility this quarter?
If value > risk, allow selectively.
If risk > value, block aggressively and revisit later.
How We Handle It in the Robots.txt Generator
In our robots.txt generator, you can now use the Block AI crawlers toggle to automatically add disallow rules for common AI agents while keeping your default crawler policy intact.
That gives non-technical teams a safer way to apply policy without manually editing syntax.
Final Recommendation
Treat AI crawler policy like any other SEO control: test, measure, iterate.
Do not choose a permanent stance once and forget it. AI referral patterns, crawler behavior, and model ecosystems are still changing quickly in 2026.
If you want help deciding whether to block or allow specific AI agents for your site, request a free SEO review and we can map policy to your goals.
