Does abcnews.com block AI crawlers?
Blocks AI training and AI answers
abcnews.com blocks both AI training crawlers and AI answer crawlers in its robots.txt.
Checked from abcnews.com/robots.txt. Robots rules change; the live file is the source of truth.
- AI crawlers blocked
- 5 of 12
- AI bots named in robots.txt
- 6
- llms.txt
- Not found
- Popularity
- Tranco top 5,000 (#2,505)
Can AI assistants cite abcnews.com?
- ChatGPT search: its search crawler is blocked
- Claude: its search crawlers may read the site
- Perplexity: its search crawlers may read the site
abcnews.com opts out of AI training by OpenAI, Google, Common Crawl, ByteDance. Training crawlers and answer crawlers are separate: blocking training doesn't by itself remove a site from AI answers.
AI crawler access, bot by bot
| Crawler | Used for | Status on abcnews.com |
|---|---|---|
| GPTBotOpenAI | AI training | Blocked |
| OAI-SearchBotOpenAI | AI answers | Some paths restricted |
| ChatGPT-UserOpenAI | AI answers | Blocked |
| ClaudeBotAnthropic | AI training | Some paths restricted |
| Claude-SearchBotAnthropic | AI answers | Some paths restricted |
| Claude-UserAnthropic | AI answers | Some paths restricted |
| PerplexityBotPerplexity | AI answers | Some paths restricted |
| Google-ExtendedGoogle | AI training | Blocked |
| Applebot-ExtendedApple | AI training | Some paths restricted |
| CCBotCommon Crawl | AI training | Blocked |
| BytespiderByteDance | AI training | Blocked |
| Meta-ExternalAgentMeta | AI training | Some paths restricted |
How abcnews.com compares
- 19% of the 1,278 popular sites we checked block GPTBot; abcnews.com is one of them.
- 18% of the 1,278 popular sites we checked block ClaudeBot; abcnews.com does not.
- 14% of the 1,278 popular sites we checked block PerplexityBot; abcnews.com does not.
- Among 199 sites of similar popularity, 20% block at least one AI crawler.
The robots.txt rules that apply to AI crawlers
User-agent: GPTBot Disallow: / User-agent: Google-Extended Disallow: / User-agent: CCBot Disallow: / User-agent: ChatGPT-User Disallow: / User-agent: anthropic-ai Disallow: / User-agent: Bytespider Disallow: / User-agent: * Disallow: /search?searchtext=* Disallow: /disneyid/* Disallow: /assets/static/ads/* Disallow: /cgi Disallow: /xls Disallow: /imp Disallow: /kmail Disallow: /map Disallow: /log Disallow: /gif Disallow: /panel Disallow: /0/ Disallow: /promo/ Disallow: /abclinks/ Disallow: /houseads/ Allow: /xmldata/mrss Allow: /xmldata/rss Allow: /xmldata/xmlPodcast Allow: /xmldata/config Allow: /xmldata/feed Disallow: /sendtofriend/ Allow: /meta/sitemap Disallow: /meta/ Disallow: /staging/ Disallow: /test/ Disallow: /swen/ Disallow: /intro/ Disallow: /go/ Disallow: /news/go/ Disallow: /widgets/ Disallow: /vp2/ Disallow: /Video/*playerIndex Disallow: /*carousel/ Disallow: /*videoLogin? Disallow: /video/browse/ Disallow: /*popup? Disallow: /alerts-v1/ Disallow: /not-allowed/ Disallow: /beta-story-container/* Disallow: /video/embed/*
Excerpt: only groups for all user-agents (*) or named AI crawlers, up to 40 rules per group.
Sites with a similar AI policy
Does abcnews.com block GPTBot?
Yes. As of Oct 2, 2026, abcnews.com's robots.txt disallows GPTBot, OpenAI's training crawler.
Can ChatGPT search show results from abcnews.com?
Its robots.txt blocks a ChatGPT search crawler, so ChatGPT search is unlikely to read or cite those pages.
Does abcnews.com have an llms.txt file?
We didn't find a valid llms.txt at abcnews.com/llms.txt when we checked.
Data: abcnews.com's public robots.txt and llms.txt, fetched by AskableHQ. Popularity rank from the Tranco list (ID Y83YG). Methodology.