Does welt.de block AI crawlers?

Can AI assistants cite welt.de?

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

welt.de opts out of AI training by Apple, Common Crawl, ByteDance. 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 welt.de compares

• 19% of the 1,278 popular sites we checked block GPTBot; welt.de does not.
• 18% of the 1,278 popular sites we checked block ClaudeBot; welt.de does not.
• 14% of the 1,278 popular sites we checked block PerplexityBot; welt.de is one of them.
• Among 196 sites of similar popularity, 30% block at least one AI crawler.

The robots.txt rules that apply to AI crawlers

User-agent: AhrefsBot
User-agent: AI2Bot
User-agent: Ai2Bot-Dolma
User-agent: aiHitBot
User-agent: Amazonbot
User-agent: Andibot
User-agent: Applebot-Extended
User-agent: Awario
User-agent: Baiduspider
User-agent: bedrockbot
User-agent: BLEXBot
User-agent: Brightbot 1.0
User-agent: Bytespider
User-agent: CCBot
User-agent: cohere-ai
User-agent: cohere-training-data-crawler
User-agent: Cotoyogi
User-agent: Crawlspace
User-agent: DataForSeoBot
User-agent: Datenbank Crawler
User-agent: Devin
User-agent: Diffbot
User-agent: dotbot
User-agent: DuckAssistBot
User-agent: Echobot Bot
User-agent: EchoboxBot
User-agent: Factset_spyderbot
User-agent: FirecrawlAgent
User-agent: Flamingo_SearchEngine
User-agent: FriendlyCrawler
User-agent: ia_archiver
User-agent: iaskspider/2.0
User-agent: ICC-Crawler
User-agent: ImagesiftBot
User-agent: img2dataset
User-agent: ISSCyberRiskCrawler
User-agent: Kangaroo Bot
User-agent: LCC
User-agent: magpie-crawler
User-agent: MistralAI-User
User-agent: MistralAI-User/1.0
User-agent: MJ12bot
User-agent: MyCentralAIScraperBot
User-agent: netEstate Imprint Crawler
User-agent: NovaAct
User-agent: omgili
User-agent: omgilibot
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: Poseidon Research Crawler
User-agent: QualifiedBot
User-agent: QuillBot
User-agent: quillbot.com
User-agent: SBIntuitionsBot
User-agent: Scrapy
User-agent: SemrushBot
User-agent: SemrushBot-OCOB
User-agent: SemrushBot-SA
User-agent: SemrushBot-SWA
User-agent: sentibot
User-agent: Sidetrade indexer bot
User-agent: SirdataBot
User-agent: sogou spider
User-agent: SummalyBot
User-agent: TerraCotta
User-agent: Thinkbot
User-agent: TikTokSpider
User-agent: Timpibot
User-agent: TurnitinBot
User-agent: VelenPublicWebCrawler
User-agent: WARDBot
User-agent: Webzio-Extended
User-agent: wpbot
User-agent: YandexAdditional
User-agent: YandexAdditionalBot
User-agent: Yeti
User-agent: YouBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: *
Disallow: /channels-extern/
Disallow: /sportdaten/
Disallow: /testgpr/
Disallow: /boerse/data/
Disallow: /partner/
Disallow: /reisetipps/
Disallow: /z/
Disallow: /appl/
Disallow: /woa/
Disallow: /am-sonntag/vorproduktion/
Disallow: /audiofiles/
Disallow: /out-of-home/
Disallow: /immobilien/expose
Disallow: /suche
Disallow: /onward/
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /*?config
Disallow: /*?config=newsmli_bloomberg2
Disallow: /*.xmli
Disallow: /*?service=ajax
Disallow: /*?service=Ajax
Disallow: /*?ajax
Disallow: /*?ajax&wid
Disallow: /*?config=print
Disallow: /*?config=articleidfromurl
Disallow: /*?config=endscreen
Disallow: /*?config=iframewelt
Disallow: /*?config=langeslestueck
Disallow: /*?config=latest_videos
Disallow: /*?config=menu_home
Disallow: /*?config=mostviewed_videos
Disallow: /*?config=recommended_videos
Disallow: /*?config=regioarticlemarginal
Disallow: /*?config=zoom
Disallow: /*?config=zoomopener
Disallow: /*?noredirect=true&config=standalone
Disallow: /*?config=standalone
Disallow: /*?wtmc=XING
Disallow: /*?config=articleidfromurl
Disallow: /*?print=yes

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

Sites with a similar AI policy

• apnews.com · 7 blocked
• people.com · 9 blocked
• adform.net · 12 blocked
• lefigaro.fr · 8 blocked
• bild.de · 4 blocked
• pexels.com · 7 blocked
• daum.net · 12 blocked
• quantserve.com · 12 blocked

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