Does federalregister.gov block AI crawlers?
Open to AI crawlers
federalregister.gov doesn't block any of the major AI crawlers we track in its robots.txt.
Checked from federalregister.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 (#3,307)
Can AI assistants cite federalregister.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
federalregister.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
| Crawler | Used for | Status on federalregister.gov |
|---|---|---|
| GPTBotOpenAI | AI training | Some paths restricted |
| OAI-SearchBotOpenAI | AI answers | Some paths restricted |
| ChatGPT-UserOpenAI | AI answers | Some paths restricted |
| 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 | Some paths restricted |
| Applebot-ExtendedApple | AI training | Some paths restricted |
| CCBotCommon Crawl | AI training | Some paths restricted |
| BytespiderByteDance | AI training | Some paths restricted |
| Meta-ExternalAgentMeta | AI training | Some paths restricted |
How federalregister.gov compares
- 19% of the 1,278 popular sites we checked block GPTBot; federalregister.gov does not.
- 18% of the 1,278 popular sites we checked block ClaudeBot; federalregister.gov does not.
- 14% of the 1,278 popular sites we checked block PerplexityBot; federalregister.gov does not.
- Among 165 sites of similar popularity, 25% block at least one AI crawler.
The robots.txt rules that apply to AI crawlers
User-agent: * Disallow: /documents/current Disallow: /documents/email-a-friend Disallow: /articles/search Disallow: /documents/search Disallow: /public-inspection/search Disallow: /regulations/search Disallow: /my/ Disallow: /auth/
Excerpt: only groups for all user-agents (*) or named AI crawlers, up to 40 rules per group.
Sites with a similar AI policy
Does federalregister.gov block GPTBot?
No. As of Oct 2, 2026, federalregister.gov's robots.txt doesn't block GPTBot, though some paths are restricted for all crawlers.
Can ChatGPT search show results from federalregister.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 federalregister.gov have an llms.txt file?
We didn't find a valid llms.txt at federalregister.gov/llms.txt when we checked.
Data: federalregister.gov's public robots.txt and llms.txt, fetched by AskableHQ. Popularity rank from the Tranco list (ID Y83YG). Methodology.