Should you block AI crawlers?

AI companies run crawlers to collect content for training and for live answers. You can allow or block each one in robots.txt.

Reasons to allow

• Your content can be cited in AI answers, bringing visibility and visits.
• For businesses that sell products or services, being recommended is valuable.

Reasons to block

• You publish premium or original content that you do not want reused.
• Heavy crawling strains your server.

Example robots.txt rules

User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /premium/

User-agent: *
Allow: /

This blocks one AI crawler from a premium section while leaving the rest of the site open. Each AI company documents its own crawler names; check their current names before writing rules.

robots.txt is voluntary

Well-behaved crawlers follow robots.txt, but it does not enforce anything. Content that must stay private needs sign-in or other access controls.

Review your choice

The AI landscape changes quickly. Review your rules every few months, and check with the AI crawler checker that they do what you intend.

A middle path

Allow crawlers that power live search and answers, block those used only for training, and keep premium content behind sign-in.

Check what you allow with the AI crawler checker and build rules with the AI robots.txt builder.