Does metro.co.uk block AI crawlers?

Can AI assistants cite metro.co.uk?

• ChatGPT search: its search crawler is blocked
• Claude: its search crawler is blocked
• Perplexity: its search crawler is blocked

metro.co.uk opts out of AI training by OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Apple, Common Crawl, ByteDance, Meta. 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

How metro.co.uk compares

• 19% of the 1,278 popular sites we checked block GPTBot; metro.co.uk is one of them.
• 18% of the 1,278 popular sites we checked block ClaudeBot; metro.co.uk is one of them.
• 14% of the 1,278 popular sites we checked block PerplexityBot; metro.co.uk is one of them.
• Among 175 sites of similar popularity, 25% block at least one AI crawler.

The robots.txt rules that apply to AI crawlers

User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php
Disallow: /search/
Disallow: /*.pdf
Disallow: /post-style/*
Disallow: /jobs-scrape/*
Disallow: /*ia_markup=*
Disallow: /dmg_liveblog/*
Disallow: /wp-includes/*
Disallow: /wp-content/*.js
Disallow: /wp-content/*.css
Disallow: /wp-json/*
Disallow: /_static/*

User-agent: AhrefsBot
User-agent: AI2Bot
User-agent: Ai2Bot-Dolma
User-agent: Amazonbot
User-agent: amazon-kendra-
User-agent: anthropic-ai
User-agent: Applebot-Extended
User-agent: bedrockbot
User-agent: Bytespider
User-agent: CloudflareBrowserRenderingCrawler
User-agent: CCBot
User-agent: ChatGLM-Spider
User-agent: ChatGPT-User
User-agent: ClaudeBot
User-agent: Claude-SearchBot
User-agent: Claude-User
User-agent: Claude-Web
User-agent: cohere-ai
User-agent: Cotoyogi
User-agent: DeepSeekBot
User-agent: Diffbot
User-agent: DuckAssistBot
User-agent: EchoboxBot
User-agent: FacebookBot
User-agent: FriendlyCrawler
User-agent: Gemini-Deep-Research
User-agent: Google-CloudVertexBot
User-agent: Google-Extended
User-agent: GoogleOther
User-agent: GoogleOther-Image
User-agent: GoogleOther-Video
User-agent: GPTBot
User-agent: Grok
User-agent: iaskspider/2.0
User-agent: ICC-Crawler
User-agent: ImagesiftBot
User-agent: img2dataset
User-agent: ISSCyberRiskCrawler
User-agent: Kangaroo Bot
User-agent: KunatoCrawler
User-agent: LinerBot
User-agent: Meltwater
User-agent: Meta-ExternalAgent
User-agent: Meta-ExternalFetcher
User-agent: MistralAI-User
User-agent: OAI-Operator
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
User-agent: omgili
User-agent: omgilibot
User-agent: PanguBot
User-agent: PerplexityBot
User-agent: Perplexity-User
User-agent: PetalBot
User-agent: QualifiedBot
User-agent: Scrapy
User-agent: Seekr
User-agent: Sidetrade indexer bot
User-agent: TaraGroup Intelligent Bot
User-agent: TikTokSpider
User-agent: Timpibot
User-agent: VelenPublicWebCrawler
User-agent: WARDBot
User-agent: Webzio-Extended
User-agent: wpbot
User-agent: WRTNBot
User-agent: YouBot
Disallow: /

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

Sites with a similar AI policy

• siteforce.com · 12 blocked
• allrecipes.com · 9 blocked
• nzherald.co.nz · 12 blocked
• worldcat.org · 4 blocked
• flipboard.com · 4 blocked
• nate.com · 12 blocked
• vogue.com · 9 blocked
• kahoot.it · 12 blocked

All sites that are “blocks ai training and ai answers” →