ConduitScore
Technical Guides7 min read

AI Crawler Access: robots.txt Configuration for GPTBot, PerplexityBot & ClaudeBot

Your robots.txt might be blocking AI agents. Learn how to configure crawler access for every major AI bot.

If AI agents cannot crawl your website, nothing else matters. Your robots.txt file is the first thing every AI crawler checks -- and most websites are accidentally blocking the AI bots that power ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini.

The Complete List of AI Crawlers

Bot NameCompanyPurpose
GPTBotOpenAIGeneral crawling for ChatGPT
OAI-SearchBotOpenAIChatGPT search results
ChatGPT-UserOpenAIReal-time browsing by ChatGPT
PerplexityBotPerplexityPerplexity search and answers
ClaudeBotAnthropicClaude web browsing
Claude-WebAnthropicClaude web search
Google-ExtendedGoogleGemini AI training and search
AmazonbotAmazonAlexa and Amazon search
BingbotMicrosoftCopilot and Bing AI
cohere-aiCohereCohere AI models
anthropic-aiAnthropicAnthropic general crawling

Recommended robots.txt Configuration

User-agent: *
Allow: /
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /dashboard/

User-agent: GPTBot Allow: /

User-agent: OAI-SearchBot Allow: /

User-agent: PerplexityBot Allow: /

User-agent: ClaudeBot Allow: /

User-agent: Google-Extended Allow: /

Sitemap: https://yoursite.com/sitemap.xml ```

Common Mistakes

  1. Blanket blocking: Many CMS platforms and hosting providers block all unknown bots by default.
  2. Forgetting OAI-SearchBot: GPTBot is not the only OpenAI crawler. OAI-SearchBot powers search.
  3. Blocking /api/ but not /dashboard/: Protect private routes, but allow public content.
  4. No sitemap reference: Including your sitemap URL helps AI crawlers discover all your pages.

How to Test

Use ConduitScore to scan your URL -- our Crawler Access analyzer checks every major AI bot against your robots.txt and reports which ones are blocked.

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