Definition
An AI crawler is a bot that fetches web pages to feed an AI system, either for training or for answering live questions. Common ones include GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, OAI-SearchBot, and Google-Extended.
On this page
At a glance
- Categories Technical
- Related fields SEO, Technical
- Difficulty Beginner
How AI Crawler Works
These are the AI-era cousins of the classic search crawler. Some gather pages to train models, others fetch in real time to ground an answer. They identify themselves by name in your server logs, and they obey, or are supposed to obey, the rules in robots.txt. If they cannot reach your pages, your content cannot enter the answers they build.
Why AI Crawler Matters
A surprising number of sites quietly block these bots, sometimes by default. Some content delivery networks began blocking AI crawlers automatically. If the bots that drive citations cannot read your site, you are invisible to AI search no matter how good the content is.
Frequently Asked Questions
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How do I know if AI crawlers can reach my site?
Check your robots.txt and your CDN settings, and look in server logs for user agents like GPTBot, ClaudeBot, and PerplexityBot.
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Should I allow AI crawlers?
If you want AI visibility, generally yes. Blocking them keeps you out of the answers they generate.