What AI crawlers should your website allow?

At minimum, allow GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot (OpenAI/ChatGPT), ClaudeBot (Anthropic/Claude), Googlebot (Google AI Overviews), and Bingbot (Microsoft Copilot). For maximum AI visibility, also allow PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, and Bytespider. Each crawler serves a different AI platform, and blocking any one reduces your visibility in that platform's responses.

How do you check if AI crawlers are accessing your site?

Check your server access logs for user-agent strings matching known AI crawlers: GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, and Bytespider. Review your robots.txt file to confirm none are blocked. Use tools like Google Search Console and third-party log analyzers to monitor crawler activity over time.

How often should you audit AI crawler access?

Audit AI crawler access quarterly at minimum, and immediately after any robots.txt changes, CDN or WAF configuration updates, or website migrations. New AI crawlers emerge regularly - Anthropic added Claude-SearchBot in 2025 - so periodic audits ensure you are not accidentally blocking new crawlers that affect your AI visibility.

Can a WAF or CDN accidentally block AI crawlers?

Yes. Web application firewalls and CDN bot management features frequently block AI crawlers by default because they classify automated traffic as suspicious. Cloudflare, Akamai, and similar services may have bot protection rules that block crawlers even when your robots.txt allows them. Check your WAF and CDN bot settings as part of every audit.

How to Audit AI Crawler Access to Your Website

Auditing AI crawler access is the process of systematically verifying that AI web crawlers - GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, and others - can reach, crawl, and index your website content. If AI crawlers cannot access your pages, your content cannot appear in AI-generated responses from ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, or Microsoft Copilot. For startups investing in content and SEO, an AI crawler audit is the first step in any AI search optimization strategy.

Many websites unknowingly block AI crawlers through robots.txt rules, WAF configurations, or CDN bot protection settings. According to Originality.ai's analysis, over 35% of the top 1,000 websites block GPTBot. If your site is among them, none of your content optimization efforts will matter for AI search visibility.

Why Does an AI Crawler Audit Matter?

AI search engines can only cite content they can access. Unlike traditional SEO where Google's crawler is almost universally allowed, AI crawlers are newer and more frequently blocked - sometimes intentionally, often accidentally.

The stakes are increasing. AI-assisted search queries are growing rapidly, and content that AI models cannot access is invisible to a growing segment of searchers. An audit ensures your technical setup does not undermine your content strategy.

Step 1: Review Your robots.txt File

Start by reading your robots.txt file at yoursite.com/robots.txt. Check for rules that block any of these AI crawler user-agents:

Crawler	User-Agent	Platform
GPTBot	`GPTBot`	ChatGPT (training)
OAI-SearchBot	`OAI-SearchBot`	ChatGPT (live search)
ClaudeBot	`ClaudeBot`	Claude (Anthropic)
Claude-SearchBot	`Claude-SearchBot`	Claude (live search)
PerplexityBot	`PerplexityBot`	Perplexity AI
Google-Extended	`Google-Extended`	Google AI (training)
Googlebot	`Googlebot`	Google AI Overviews
Bingbot	`Bingbot`	Microsoft Copilot
Bytespider	`Bytespider`	TikTok/ByteDance AI

Common blocking patterns to watch for:

A wildcard disallow-all rule blocks every crawler including AI bots:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Specific AI crawler blocks may have been added intentionally or copied from another site's robots.txt:

User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /

Check for both explicit blocks and wildcard rules that catch AI crawlers unintentionally.

Recommended robots.txt for AI visibility:

User-agent: GPTBot
Allow: /

User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /

User-agent: ClaudeBot
Allow: /

User-agent: Google-Extended
Allow: /

User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /

For detailed robots.txt configuration, see our guide on what robots.txt is and how to configure it.

Step 2: Check Server Access Logs

Your robots.txt may allow AI crawlers, but that does not mean they are actually visiting. Check your server logs to verify crawler activity.

Search your access logs for these user-agent strings:

GPTBot
OAI-SearchBot
ClaudeBot
PerplexityBot
Google-Extended

If you see requests from these crawlers, they are reaching your site. If you do not see them after several weeks of allowing access, potential issues include: your site is too new for crawlers to have discovered, your content is not linked from other crawled sites, or something else is blocking them.

Step 3: Audit WAF and CDN Settings

This is where most accidental blocks happen. Web application firewalls and CDN bot management features often classify AI crawlers as bots to block by default.

Cloudflare. Check Bot Fight Mode and Super Bot Fight Mode settings. These features can block legitimate AI crawlers. If enabled, verify that known AI crawler IPs are allowlisted or that bot management rules have exceptions for AI crawlers.

AWS WAF / CloudFront. Check for rate-limiting rules or bot control rules that might block high-volume automated requests from AI crawlers.

Akamai / Fastly / Other CDNs. Review bot management configurations for rules that block automated traffic by user-agent or behavior pattern.

Hosting providers. Some managed hosting platforms have built-in bot protection that blocks AI crawlers without explicit configuration from the site owner. Check your hosting provider's security settings.

Step 4: Verify Specific Page Access

Even with correct robots.txt and no WAF blocks, individual pages might be inaccessible due to:

noindex meta tags that tell crawlers not to index specific pages
Login requirements blocking authenticated-only content
JavaScript rendering preventing crawlers from seeing dynamically loaded content
Canonical tag issues pointing crawlers to different URLs

Test critical pages by checking whether they appear in Google's cache (a proxy for crawler accessibility) and whether your content appears when asking AI models questions that should cite your pages.

Step 5: Document and Schedule Regular Audits

Create a checklist of all access points verified during this audit:

robots.txt allows all target AI crawlers
Server logs show crawler activity within the last 30 days
WAF/CDN settings have exceptions for AI crawlers
Key content pages are accessible and indexable
No orphaned pages blocking crawler discovery
llms.txt file configured (optional but recommended)

Schedule this audit quarterly. The AI crawler landscape evolves quickly - Anthropic added Claude-SearchBot and Claude-User as separate crawlers in 2025. New crawlers will continue emerging, and your audit process should catch them.

At Conbersa, we audit AI crawler access as the first step in every GEO engagement. Technical access is the foundation - without it, content quality, structured data, and authority signals are irrelevant because AI models simply cannot see your content.