Usually, don’t block every AI crawler by default. Decide separately whether you want search discovery, training use, or user-requested page retrieval; then set crawler preferences and, if you need actual enforcement, use server- or edge-level controls. A crawler name in a policy is not proof it has visited your site: check your own request logs to see what is reaching it.
“AI crawler” can mean three different things
The label covers activities with different consequences. A crawler may gather pages for search, collect material that could be used to train a model, or fetch a page because a person asked an assistant about it. Those distinctions matter more than the broad label “AI.” Cloudflare uses the categories Search, Training, and Agent for these behaviors, but notes that one bot can have more than one behavior; its labels are not a universal taxonomy. Cloudflare’s bot documentation describes its classifications.
Search and answer discovery
OpenAI identifies OAI-SearchBot as the crawler used to surface websites in ChatGPT search features. Anthropic identifies Claude-SearchBot with improving search-result quality. A provider’s search crawler is therefore not necessarily the same as its training crawler. See OpenAI’s crawler documentation and Anthropic’s crawler guidance.
Potential model training
OpenAI says GPTBot may collect content used to train its foundation models. Anthropic describes ClaudeBot as its potential model-training crawler. These are provider-specific descriptions, not a guarantee that every fetched page will be used for training.
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A fetch prompted by a person
OpenAI describes ChatGPT-User as a user-initiated retrieval agent, rather than an automatic web crawler, and cautions that robots.txt rules may not apply to those user-triggered actions. Anthropic separately identifies Claude-User as accessing pages in response to a person’s question. Restricting this activity can stop some users from getting your page through an assistant, even if you allow that provider’s search crawler.
What you give up—or preserve—by choosing a policy
OpenAI says a site that opts out of OAI-SearchBot will not appear in ChatGPT search answers, though it may still appear as a navigational link. OpenAI documents OAI-SearchBot and GPTBot as independently configurable, so a site can express different preferences for search and training. Anthropic likewise publishes distinct directives for its crawler types. The effect of a restriction depends on the provider, the crawler, and whether the operator honors the directive.
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| Policy | Discovery and retrieval | Training preference | Enforcement and trade-off |
|---|---|---|---|
| Allow | Leaves access open to crawlers you allow. | Does not express an opt-out for the allowed crawler. | Relies on crawler behavior and may retain automated request load. |
| Selectively restrict | Leaves selected search systems available while restricting others. | Can express a training opt-out when a provider separates training and search controls. | Requires identifying crawler purposes and checking for conflicting rules at the server or edge. |
| Block broadly | May remove access through blocked search crawlers and prevent some user-directed fetches. | Signals a wider refusal, subject to crawler compliance. | Can reduce requests only if the block is enforced; a broad rule risks blocking useful access too. |
If discovery matters, identify and evaluate the search-specific crawler before blocking it. If your priority is to discourage future training use, first check whether that provider offers a separate training control. If automated requests are creating a measurable service problem, use traffic controls appropriate to the source rather than treating a robots.txt entry as a load-management guarantee.
What robots.txt does—and what it cannot do
The Robots Exclusion Protocol asks compliant crawlers to follow rules about which URIs to access. It is a published crawler preference, not a secret list or a security boundary. RFC 9309 states, “These rules are not a form of access authorization,” and says the protocol is not a substitute for valid content-security measures. RFC 9309 recommends application-layer controls such as HTTP authentication when access must actually be restricted.
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- For crawler preferences: robots.txt can tell a cooperative crawler not to fetch specified paths. It does not prevent a noncompliant crawler from requesting them.
- For access restriction: use controls such as authentication, rate limits, or server, CDN, or WAF rules that can deny or limit requests.
- For evidence of what is happening: inspect your own server or edge logs. A provider’s published policy describes its stated practice; it does not establish that every request to every site complied.
Anthropic publishes this whole-site opt-out example for ClaudeBot:
User-agent: ClaudeBot
Disallow: /That example targets ClaudeBot only; it is not a universal instruction to block all Anthropic activity or every AI crawler. Anthropic says its bots honor robots.txt and anti-circumvention technologies, but that is Anthropic’s stated policy. It also says to set the rule on every subdomain you want to opt out from. Its example of Crawl-delay is explicitly non-standard, so do not assume every crawler will interpret it. Anthropic cautions that IP blocking may not reliably or persistently guarantee an opt-out.
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Make the change in the right layer
- Decide what outcome you want. Write down whether the goal is to preserve search discovery, express a training preference, limit user-triggered retrieval, or reduce request load. Those goals may call for different rules.
- Identify the crawler and its stated purpose. Check the provider’s current documentation rather than inferring purpose from a bot name. For OpenAI, compare OAI-SearchBot, GPTBot, and ChatGPT-User in its crawler documentation; for Anthropic, compare ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot, and Claude-User in its guidance.
- Inspect every policy layer. Review the robots.txt served by your site and check whether your host, CDN, WAF, or security plugin generates or overrides bot rules. A policy at the origin may not match an edge-layer block, or vice versa.
- Publish only the rule that matches your decision. Apply crawler-specific robots.txt directives when a preference is sufficient. If requests must actually be denied or throttled, configure the relevant server or edge control as well. Check the resulting live policy and test access appropriately.
- Watch logs after the change. Verify which requests still arrive and whether the rule has had the intended effect. OpenAI says search systems may take about 24 hours to reflect robots.txt changes; that timing is specific to its documented search behavior, not a universal propagation guarantee.
- Recheck provider and platform documentation. Crawler identities, stated purposes, controls, and defaults can change. Review official guidance again when your traffic, discovery needs, or site stack changes.
Cloudflare’s controls are specific to its platform
As of October 4, 2026, Cloudflare’s September 15, 2026 announcement describes separate Search, Training, and Agent controls and a “Disallow AI Training” preference. Cloudflare says that preference is intended to preserve search for certain mixed-use crawlers while blocking other training crawlers. It names Googlebot, Bingbot, and Applebot as mixed-use examples, and lists training-only crawlers from Amazon, Anthropic, Meta, and OpenAI among its examples. These are Cloudflare’s classifications and product claims, not a universal crawler registry. Read Cloudflare’s announcement.
Cloudflare’s documentation says defaults effective September 15, 2026 for new domains keep Search allowed while blocking Training and Agent bots on pages detected to show ads under the relevant configuration. It also says the legacy “Block AI Bots” control is deprecated as of that date, and the September announcement says legacy “Block AI Bots” and Managed Robots.txt settings are being replaced by newer controls. Verify the live dashboard and the rules actually served for your domain before changing a setting; do not assume another host or CDN has the same controls or defaults. Cloudflare’s Block AI Bots documentation describes its platform behavior.
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