Does theguardian.com block AI crawlers?

Can AI assistants cite theguardian.com?

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

theguardian.com opts out of AI training by Anthropic, 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 theguardian.com compares

• 19% of the 1,278 popular sites we checked block GPTBot; theguardian.com does not.
• 18% of the 1,278 popular sites we checked block ClaudeBot; theguardian.com is one of them.
• 14% of the 1,278 popular sites we checked block PerplexityBot; theguardian.com is one of them.
• Among 177 sites of similar popularity, 34% block at least one AI crawler.

The robots.txt rules that apply to AI crawlers

User-agent: *
Disallow: /sendarticle/
Disallow: /Users/
Disallow: /users/
Disallow: /*/print$
Disallow: /email/
Disallow: /contactus/
Disallow: /share/
Disallow: /websearch
Disallow: /*?commentpage=
Disallow: /whsmiths/
Disallow: /external/overture/
Disallow: /discussion/report-abuse/*
Disallow: /discussion/report-abuse-ajax/*
Disallow: /discussion/comment-permalink/*
Disallow: /discussion/report-abuse/*
Disallow: /discussion/user-report-abuse/*
Disallow: /discussion/handlers/*
Disallow: /discussion/your-profile
Disallow: /discussion/your-comments
Disallow: /discussion/edit-profile
Disallow: /discussion/search/comments
Disallow: /discussion/*
Disallow: /search
Disallow: /music/artist/*
Disallow: /music/album/*
Disallow: /books/data/*
Disallow: /settings/
Disallow: /embed/
Disallow: /*styles/js-on.css$
Disallow: /sport/olympics/2008/events/*
Disallow: /sport/olympics/2008/medals/*
Disallow: /f/healthcheck
Disallow: /sections
Disallow: /top-stories
Disallow: /most-read/sport
Disallow: /articles
Disallow: /global$
Disallow: /*/feedarticle/*
Disallow: /travel/2013/aug/22/been-there-readers-competition?*
Disallow: /preference/*

User-agent: NewsNow
User-agent: CCBot
User-agent: TurnitinBot
User-agent: PetalBot
User-agent: MoodleBot
User-agent: FacebookBot
User-agent: Bytespider
User-agent: Mojeek
User-agent: JenkersBot
User-agent: Seekr
User-agent: YouBot
User-agent: Arquivo-web-crawler
User-agent: coccocbot-web
User-agent: SeznamBot
User-agent: PerplexityBot
User-agent: yacy
User-agent: anthropic-ai
User-agent: ClaudeBot
User-agent: Claude-SearchBot
User-agent: Claude-User
User-agent: AwarioRssBot
User-agent: AwarioSmartBot
User-agent: SentiOne
User-agent: ImageSift
User-agent: Applebot-Extended
User-agent: YandexAdditional
User-agent: YandexAdditionalBot
User-agent: scalepostAI
User-agent: Buck
User-agent: meta-externalagent
User-agent: Amazonbot
User-agent: amazon-QBusiness
User-agent: DuckAssistBot
User-agent: Google-CloudVertexBot
User-agent: Amzn-SearchBot
User-agent: AhrefsBot
User-agent: AhrefsSiteAudit
Disallow: /

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

Sites with a similar AI policy

• cnn.com · 11 blocked
• ebay.com · 7 blocked
• t-online.de · 7 blocked
• soundcloud.com · 10 blocked
• forbes.com · 7 blocked
• bbc.com · 10 blocked
• meraki.com · 11 blocked
• nytimes.com · 12 blocked

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