Does theconversation.com block AI crawlers?

Can AI assistants cite theconversation.com?

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

theconversation.com 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 theconversation.com compares

• 19% of the 1,278 popular sites we checked block GPTBot; theconversation.com is one of them.
• 18% of the 1,278 popular sites we checked block ClaudeBot; theconversation.com is one of them.
• 14% of the 1,278 popular sites we checked block PerplexityBot; theconversation.com is one of them.
• Among 205 sites of similar popularity, 31% block at least one AI crawler.

The robots.txt rules that apply to AI crawlers

User-agent: *
Disallow: /metrics/
Disallow: /auth/
Disallow: /content/
Disallow: /comments/*
Disallow: /sign_in?
Disallow: /sign_up?
Disallow: /become-an-author?
Disallow: /profiles/*/articles
Disallow: /profiles/*/activities
Disallow: /*/search?
Disallow: /experts/search?
Disallow: /experts/search/*
Disallow: /pb/*

User-agent: AddSearchBot
User-agent: AgentTimes
User-agent: AI2Bot
User-agent: AI2Bot-DeepResearchEval
User-agent: Ai2Bot-Dolma
User-agent: aiHitBot
User-agent: AIWebIndex
User-agent: AliyunSecBot/Aliyun
User-agent: amazon-kendra
User-agent: amazon-QBusiness
User-agent: Amazonbot
User-agent: AmazonBuyForMe
User-agent: Amzn-SearchBot
User-agent: Amzn-User
User-agent: Andibot
User-agent: Anomura
User-agent: anthropic-ai
User-agent: ApifyBot
User-agent: ApifyWebsiteContentCrawler
User-agent: Applebot
User-agent: Applebot-Extended
User-agent: Aranet-SearchBot
User-agent: atlassian-bot
User-agent: Autn-WKOOP
User-agent: Awario
User-agent: AzureAI-SearchBot
User-agent: barkrowler
User-agent: bedrockbot
User-agent: bigsur.ai
User-agent: Bravebot
User-agent: Brightbot
User-agent: Brightbot 1.0
User-agent: BuddyBot
User-agent: Bytespider
User-agent: CCBot
User-agent: Channel3Bot
User-agent: ChatGLM-Spider
User-agent: ChatGPT Agent
User-agent: ChatGPT-User
User-agent: Claude-Code
User-agent: Claude-SearchBot
User-agent: Claude-User
User-agent: Claude-Web
User-agent: ClaudeBot
User-agent: Cloudflare-AutoRAG
User-agent: CloudVertexBot
User-agent: Code
User-agent: cohere-ai
User-agent: cohere-training-data-crawler
User-agent: Cotoyogi
User-agent: CragCrawler
User-agent: Crawl4AI
User-agent: Crawlspace
User-agent: Cursor
User-agent: Datenbank Crawler
User-agent: DeepSeekBot
User-agent: Devin
User-agent: Diffbot
User-agent: dobot
User-agent: DuckAssistBot
User-agent: Echobot Bot
User-agent: EchoboxBot
User-agent: ExaBot
User-agent: ExaSearchBot
User-agent: FacebookBot
User-agent: Factset_spyderbot
User-agent: FirecrawlAgent
User-agent: FriendlyCrawler
User-agent: GeistHaus-PageFetcher
User-agent: Gemini-Deep-Research
User-agent: Google-Agent
User-agent: Google-CloudVertexBot
User-agent: Google-Extended
User-agent: Google-Firebase
User-agent: Google-Gemini-CLI
User-agent: Google-NotebookLM
User-agent: GoogleAgent-Mariner
User-agent: GoogleAgent-URLContext
User-agent: GoogleOther
User-agent: GoogleOther-Image
User-agent: GoogleOther-Video
User-agent: GPTBot
User-agent: HawaiiBot
User-agent: HenkBot
User-agent: iAskBot
User-agent: iaskspider
User-agent: iaskspider/2.0
User-agent: ICC-Crawler
User-agent: ImagesiftBot
User-agent: imageSpider
User-agent: img2dataset
User-agent: ISSCyberRiskCrawler
User-agent: kagi-fetcher
User-agent: Kangaroo Bot
User-agent: Kimi-User
User-agent: KlaviyoAIBot
User-agent: KunatoCrawler
User-agent: laion-huggingface-processor
User-agent: LAIONDownloader
User-agent: LCC
User-agent: Lightpanda
User-agent: LinerBot
User-agent: Linguee Bot
User-agent: LinkupBot
User-agent: Manus-User
User-agent: meta-externalagent
User-agent: meta-externalfetcher
User-agent: meta-webindexer
User-agent: MistralAI-User
User-agent: MistralAI-User/1.0
User-agent: Mozilla-Tabstack
User-agent: MyCentralAIScraperBot
User-agent: NagetBot
User-agent: netEstate Imprint Crawler
User-agent: newsai
User-agent: NotebookLM
User-agent: NovaAct
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
User-agent: omgili
User-agent: omgilibot
User-agent: OpenAI
User-agent: opencode
User-agent: Operator
User-agent: PanguBot
User-agent: Panscient
User-agent: panscient.com
User-agent: Perplexity-User
User-agent: PerplexityBot
User-agent: PetalBot
User-agent: PhindBot
User-agent: Poggio-Citations
User-agent: Poseidon Research Crawler
User-agent: QualifiedBot
User-agent: Querit-SearchBot
User-agent: QueritBot
User-agent: QuillBot
User-agent: quillbot.com
User-agent: Reflectionbot
User-agent: SBIntuitionsBot
User-agent: Scrapy
User-agent: SemrushBot-OCOB
User-agent: SemrushBot-SWA
User-agent: Shap-User
User-agent: ShapBot
User-agent: Sidetrade indexer bot
User-agent: Spider
User-agent: TavilyBot
User-agent: Terra Cotta
User-agent: TerraCotta
User-agent: Thinkbot
User-agent: TikTokSpider
User-agent: Timpibot
User-agent: TongyiBot
User-agent: Trae
User-agent: TwinAgent
User-agent: UseAI
User-agent: VelenPublicWebCrawler
User-agent: WARDBot
User-agent: Webzio-Extended
User-agent: wpbot
User-agent: WRTNBot
User-agent: YaK
User-agent: YandexAdditional
User-agent: YandexAdditionalBot
User-agent: YiyanBot
User-agent: YouBot
User-agent: ZanistaBot
Disallow: /

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

Sites with a similar AI policy

• netcraze.io · 12 blocked
• economist.com · 11 blocked
• ad.nl · 9 blocked
• nypost.com · 9 blocked
• nu.nl · 9 blocked
• namu.wiki · 12 blocked
• vg.no · 8 blocked
• fmkorea.com · 8 blocked

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