AI crawler directory

Every major AI platform sends its own crawler, for a different purpose. Here's what each one does, and what blocking or allowing it actually means. Every entry links to first-party documentation where the operator publishes it.

OpenAI

Search and training permissions are separate. If your website is missing from answers, read why your site isn’t showing up in ChatGPT before changing crawler rules.

Training

GPTBot

OpenAI

Crawls public content that may be used to train future OpenAI models.

OpenAI crawler documentation ↗Explore the related checker →

If blocked: Your content is excluded from OpenAI's model training crawls. It has no effect on whether ChatGPT can cite your site in search.

If allowed: Your public content becomes eligible for inclusion in OpenAI's training data crawls.

Search / citation

OAI-SearchBot

OpenAI

Powers live web results and citations shown inside ChatGPT search.

OpenAI crawler documentation ↗Explore the related checker →

If blocked: Your pages become ineligible to appear as a live citation in ChatGPT search answers.

If allowed: Your pages can be fetched and cited in real time when relevant to a user's question.

On-demand fetch

ChatGPT-User

OpenAI

Fetches a specific page when a user explicitly asks ChatGPT to browse it.

OpenAI crawler documentation ↗Explore the related checker →

If blocked: ChatGPT cannot open your page even when a user directly pastes your URL and asks about it.

If allowed: ChatGPT can open and read your page on a user's direct request.

Anthropic

Training

ClaudeBot

Anthropic

Anthropic's general-purpose crawler for public web content.

Anthropic crawler documentation ↗Explore the related checker →

If blocked: Your content is excluded from Anthropic's general crawling.

If allowed: Your public content becomes accessible to Anthropic's crawler.

Search / citation

Claude-SearchBot

Anthropic

Powers live citations when Claude uses web search.

Anthropic crawler documentation ↗Explore the related checker →

If blocked: Your pages become ineligible for live citation in Claude's web search.

If allowed: Your pages can be fetched and cited when relevant to a user's question.

On-demand fetch

Claude-User

Anthropic

Fetches a page when a user directly asks Claude to read a specific URL.

Anthropic crawler documentation ↗Explore the related checker →

If blocked: Claude cannot open your page even on a direct user request.

If allowed: Claude can open and read your page on a user's direct request.

Google

Indexing

Googlebot

Google

Google's primary crawler for search indexing — the foundation most AI Overviews and Gemini grounding relies on.

Google Search Central documentation ↗Explore the related checker →

If blocked: Your site drops out of Google Search entirely, and AI features built on search grounding lose access.

If allowed: Your site remains eligible for indexing, ranking and AI-grounded features.

Training

Google-Extended

Google

Controls whether your content can be used to improve Gemini and Vertex AI models, separately from search indexing.

Google Search Central documentation ↗Explore the related checker →

If blocked: Your content is excluded from Gemini/Vertex AI model training while remaining indexable in Search.

If allowed: Your content becomes eligible for use in Gemini and Vertex AI model improvement.

Microsoft

Indexing

Bingbot

Microsoft

Crawls pages for Bing's index, which Microsoft says can also make public website content available for Copilot grounding.

Microsoft Copilot Studio guidance ↗

If blocked: Your pages can become unavailable to Bing Search and Copilot experiences that ground answers in Bing's web index.

If allowed: Your pages remain eligible for Bing indexing and related Copilot grounding; it does not guarantee ranking or inclusion in an answer.

Perplexity AI

Search / citation

PerplexityBot

Perplexity AI

Crawls and indexes content to power live citations inside Perplexity answers.

Perplexity crawler documentation ↗Explore the related checker →

If blocked: Your pages become ineligible to be cited in Perplexity's answers.

If allowed: Your pages can be indexed and cited when relevant to a user's question.

Amazon

Amazon publishes separate agents for general product improvement, search discovery and user-requested Alexa retrieval. Compare their rules in the AI robots.txt checker; do not treat Amazonbot as the only Amazon agent.

Amazon logoTraining

Amazonbot

Amazon

Crawls public content to improve Amazon products and services; Amazon says the content may be used to train Amazon AI models.

Amazonbot documentation ↗

If blocked: Amazonbot should not crawl the blocked paths for this general product-improvement and potential model-training purpose.

If allowed: Your public content becomes eligible for Amazonbot's crawl and potential use described by Amazon; use is not guaranteed.

Amazon logoSearch / citation

Amzn-SearchBot

Amazon

Indexes public content for search experiences in Amazon services, including eligible Alexa experiences; Amazon says it is not used for generative AI training.

Amazonbot documentation ↗

If blocked: The blocked pages become ineligible for Amazon search experiences that depend on this crawler.

If allowed: Your pages remain eligible for discovery in supported Amazon search experiences; visibility is not guaranteed.

Amazon logoOn-demand fetch

Amzn-User

Amazon

Fetches a page in response to an Alexa user's request. Amazon says it is not used for automated crawling or generative AI training.

Amazonbot documentation ↗

If blocked: Robots rules may not fully prevent this user-triggered fetch: Amazon says Amzn-User may not follow all robots.txt directives.

If allowed: Alexa can attempt to retrieve the page for a user's request; successful retrieval or use in a response is not guaranteed.

Mistral AI

Mistral also separates search indexing, model training and user-requested retrieval. This is why a blanket “AI bot” rule can remove search access when the intended choice was only to decline training.

Search / citation

MistralAI-Index

Mistral AI

Builds Mistral's web index for search and Vibe. Mistral says this crawler is not used for training models.

Mistral crawler documentation ↗

If blocked: Your blocked pages become unavailable to Mistral's own search index and related discovery experiences.

If allowed: Your public pages remain eligible for Mistral search indexing; inclusion or citation is not guaranteed.

Training

MistralAI-Training

Mistral AI

Crawls public web content for Mistral model-training datasets, separately from Mistral's search index.

Mistral crawler documentation ↗

If blocked: Your blocked pages are excluded from future crawls by Mistral's named training agent.

If allowed: Your public content becomes eligible for Mistral's training-data crawl; collection or model use is not guaranteed.

On-demand fetch

MistralAI-User

Mistral AI

Visits a page when a user asks Mistral's Vibe product to retrieve it; Mistral says these visits are not used for model training.

Mistral crawler documentation ↗

If blocked: Mistral's user-requested fetch should not access blocked paths, which can prevent the page being used for that request.

If allowed: Mistral can attempt to retrieve the page for a user's request; selection or citation is not guaranteed.

Apple

Indexing

Applebot

Apple

Powers Siri, Spotlight and Safari's on-device intelligence features by indexing public content.

Apple crawler documentation ↗

If blocked: Your site drops out of Siri and Spotlight results and Apple's other search-powered features.

If allowed: Your site remains eligible for indexing by Apple's search and on-device intelligence features.

Training

Applebot-Extended

Apple

Controls whether your content can be used to train Apple's foundation models, separately from Applebot indexing.

Apple crawler documentation ↗

If blocked: Your content is excluded from Apple Intelligence model training while remaining eligible for Siri/Spotlight indexing via Applebot.

If allowed: Your content becomes eligible for use in training Apple's foundation models.

ByteDance

Training

Bytespider

ByteDance

ByteDance's crawler (the company behind TikTok), gathering content believed to support search and AI model training.

Known Agents crawler registry (no official ByteDance documentation is publicly published) ↗

If blocked: Your content is excluded from ByteDance's crawl. ByteDance has not published an official crawler policy page, so exact downstream use isn't independently confirmable.

If allowed: Bytespider can fetch your public content. Several third parties have reported it crawling more aggressively and less selectively than other AI crawlers, so allowing it can mean more request volume than other bots.

Common Crawl Foundation

Training

CCBot

Common Crawl Foundation

Crawls the public web to build the Common Crawl archive — a free dataset that OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and many other labs have used as raw training material.

Common Crawl Foundation FAQ ↗

If blocked: Your content is excluded from future Common Crawl archive snapshots. This is one step removed from any single AI company — it affects a shared dataset multiple labs may draw from, not one platform's crawl directly.

If allowed: Your public content becomes eligible for inclusion in Common Crawl's periodic archive, which is openly downloadable and has historically been used to help pretrain several major language models.