Does youtu.be block AI crawlers?
Open to AI crawlers
youtu.be doesn't block any of the major AI crawlers we track in its robots.txt.
Checked from youtu.be/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 100 (#47)
Can AI assistants cite youtu.be?
- 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
youtu.be 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 youtu.be |
|---|---|---|
| GPTBotOpenAI | AI training | Some paths restricted |
| OAI-SearchBotOpenAI | AI answers | Some paths restricted |
| ChatGPT-UserOpenAI | AI answers | Some paths restricted |
| ClaudeBotAnthropic | AI training | Some paths restricted |
| Claude-SearchBotAnthropic | AI answers | Some paths restricted |
| Claude-UserAnthropic | AI answers | Some paths restricted |
| PerplexityBotPerplexity | AI answers | Some paths restricted |
| Google-ExtendedGoogle | AI training | Some paths restricted |
| Applebot-ExtendedApple | AI training | Some paths restricted |
| CCBotCommon Crawl | AI training | Some paths restricted |
| BytespiderByteDance | AI training | Some paths restricted |
| Meta-ExternalAgentMeta | AI training | Some paths restricted |
How youtu.be compares
- 19% of the 1,278 popular sites we checked block GPTBot; youtu.be does not.
- 18% of the 1,278 popular sites we checked block ClaudeBot; youtu.be does not.
- 14% of the 1,278 popular sites we checked block PerplexityBot; youtu.be does not.
- Among 107 sites of similar popularity, 38% block at least one AI crawler.
The robots.txt rules that apply to AI crawlers
User-agent: * Disallow: /api/ Disallow: /comment Disallow: /feeds/videos.xml Disallow: /get_video Disallow: /get_video_info Disallow: /get_midroll_info Disallow: /live_chat Disallow: /login Disallow: /results Disallow: /signup Disallow: /t/terms Disallow: /timedtext_video Disallow: /verify_age Disallow: /watch_ajax Disallow: /watch_fragments_ajax Disallow: /watch_popup Disallow: /watch_queue_ajax Disallow: /youtubei/ Allow: /apple-app-site-association Allow: /.well-known/*
Excerpt: only groups for all user-agents (*) or named AI crawlers, up to 40 rules per group.
Sites with a similar AI policy
Does youtu.be block GPTBot?
No. As of Oct 2, 2026, youtu.be's robots.txt doesn't block GPTBot, though some paths are restricted for all crawlers.
Can ChatGPT search show results from youtu.be?
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 youtu.be have an llms.txt file?
We didn't find a valid llms.txt at youtu.be/llms.txt when we checked.
Data: youtu.be's public robots.txt and llms.txt, fetched by AskableHQ. Popularity rank from the Tranco list (ID Y83YG). Methodology.