Does vatican.va block AI crawlers?
Open to AI crawlers
vatican.va doesn't block any of the major AI crawlers we track in its robots.txt.
Checked from vatican.va/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 (#3,356)
Can AI assistants cite vatican.va?
- 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
vatican.va 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 vatican.va |
|---|---|---|
| GPTBotOpenAI | AI training | Allowed |
| OAI-SearchBotOpenAI | AI answers | Allowed |
| ChatGPT-UserOpenAI | AI answers | Allowed |
| ClaudeBotAnthropic | AI training | Allowed |
| Claude-SearchBotAnthropic | AI answers | Allowed |
| Claude-UserAnthropic | AI answers | Allowed |
| PerplexityBotPerplexity | AI answers | Allowed |
| Google-ExtendedGoogle | AI training | Allowed |
| Applebot-ExtendedApple | AI training | Allowed |
| CCBotCommon Crawl | AI training | Allowed |
| BytespiderByteDance | AI training | Allowed |
| Meta-ExternalAgentMeta | AI training | Allowed |
How vatican.va compares
- 19% of the 1,278 popular sites we checked block GPTBot; vatican.va does not.
- 18% of the 1,278 popular sites we checked block ClaudeBot; vatican.va does not.
- 14% of the 1,278 popular sites we checked block PerplexityBot; vatican.va does not.
- Among 150 sites of similar popularity, 25% block at least one AI crawler.
The robots.txt rules that apply to AI crawlers
User-agent: * Allow: *
Excerpt: only groups for all user-agents (*) or named AI crawlers, up to 40 rules per group.
Sites with a similar AI policy
Does vatican.va block GPTBot?
No. As of Oct 2, 2026, vatican.va's robots.txt doesn't block GPTBot.
Can ChatGPT search show results from vatican.va?
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 vatican.va have an llms.txt file?
We didn't find a valid llms.txt at vatican.va/llms.txt when we checked.
Data: vatican.va's public robots.txt and llms.txt, fetched by AskableHQ. Popularity rank from the Tranco list (ID Y83YG). Methodology.