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Does archives.gov block AI crawlers?

Open to AI crawlers

archives.gov doesn't block any of the major AI crawlers we track in its robots.txt.

Checked from archives.gov/robots.txt. Robots rules change; the live file is the source of truth.

AI crawlers blocked
0 of 12
AI bots named in robots.txt
0
llms.txt
Not found
Popularity
Tranco top 5,000 (#2,701)

Can AI assistants cite archives.gov?

  • ChatGPT search: its search crawlers may read the site
  • Claude: its search crawlers may read the site
  • Perplexity: its search crawlers may read the site

archives.gov doesn't opt out of AI model training through robots.txt. 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

CrawlerUsed forStatus on archives.gov
GPTBotOpenAIAI trainingSome paths restricted
OAI-SearchBotOpenAIAI answersSome paths restricted
ChatGPT-UserOpenAIAI answersSome paths restricted
ClaudeBotAnthropicAI trainingSome paths restricted
Claude-SearchBotAnthropicAI answersSome paths restricted
Claude-UserAnthropicAI answersSome paths restricted
PerplexityBotPerplexityAI answersSome paths restricted
Google-ExtendedGoogleAI trainingSome paths restricted
Applebot-ExtendedAppleAI trainingSome paths restricted
CCBotCommon CrawlAI trainingSome paths restricted
BytespiderByteDanceAI trainingSome paths restricted
Meta-ExternalAgentMetaAI trainingSome paths restricted

How archives.gov compares

  • 19% of the 1,278 popular sites we checked block GPTBot; archives.gov does not.
  • 18% of the 1,278 popular sites we checked block ClaudeBot; archives.gov does not.
  • 14% of the 1,278 popular sites we checked block PerplexityBot; archives.gov does not.
  • Among 186 sites of similar popularity, 25% block at least one AI crawler.

The robots.txt rules that apply to AI crawlers

User-agent: *
Disallow: /citizen-archivist/history-hub/hh-test
Disallow: /developer/artificial-intelligence-and-machine-learning-datasets
Disallow: /developer/1940-census
Disallow: /developer/national-archives-catalog-dataset

Excerpt: only groups for all user-agents (*) or named AI crawlers, up to 40 rules per group.

Sites with a similar AI policy

All sites that are “open to ai crawlers” →

Does archives.gov block GPTBot?

No. As of Oct 2, 2026, archives.gov's robots.txt doesn't block GPTBot, though some paths are restricted for all crawlers.

Can ChatGPT search show results from archives.gov?

Its robots.txt doesn't block OAI-SearchBot or ChatGPT-User, so ChatGPT's search crawlers may read it. Whether pages are actually shown depends on ChatGPT.

Does archives.gov have an llms.txt file?

We didn't find a valid llms.txt at archives.gov/llms.txt when we checked.

Data: archives.gov's public robots.txt and llms.txt, fetched by AskableHQ. Popularity rank from the Tranco list (ID Y83YG). Methodology.