aol.com: what it tells AI crawlers

On 27 October 2026, aol.com's robots.txt fully blocked GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended and CCBot.

Last verified 2026-10-28 03:59 UTC (daily run of 2026-10-27). Proof for that day.

Panel
top 1k (Tranco)
robots.txt
ok (HTTP 200) · https://www.aol.com:443/robots.txt
unchanged since 2026-10-26 · sha256 25f13d669345b3ff… · view as recorded
The * group
allows applies to every agent without its own group

Per AI bot, 2026-10-27

User agentVerdictHow
GPTBotblocksnamed in its own group
OAI-SearchBotallowsthrough the * group
ChatGPT-Userallowsnamed in its own group
ClaudeBotblocksnamed in its own group
Claude-SearchBotallowsthrough the * group
Claude-Userallowsthrough the * group
PerplexityBotallowsnamed in its own group
Perplexity-Userallowsthrough the * group
Googlebotallowsthrough the * group
Google-Extendedblocksnamed in its own group
Applebot-Extendedallowsthrough the * group
CCBotblocksnamed in its own group
Bytespiderblocksnamed in its own group
Meta-ExternalAgentallowsthrough the * group
Amazonbotallowsthrough the * group
anthropic-aiblocksnamed in its own group
Claude-Webblocksnamed in its own group
cohere-aiblocksnamed in its own group
Diffbotblocksnamed in its own group
FacebookBotblocksnamed in its own group
FriendlyCrawlerblocksnamed in its own group
ImagesiftBotblocksnamed in its own group
omgiliblocksnamed in its own group
omgilibotblocksnamed in its own group
Panscientblocksnamed in its own group
PetalBotblocksnamed in its own group
Scrapyblocksnamed in its own group
YouBotblocksnamed in its own group

Other signals

Publishes /llms.txtno
Publishes /ai.txtno
Publishes /.well-known/tdmrep.jsonno
Reserves TDM rights (TDMRep file, header or meta)no
Declares Content Signals (robots.txt or header)no
Says ai-train=no in a Content Signalno
Points to an RSL licence (robots.txt License line or Link header)no
Answers with an x402 payment offer (lower bound: only the homepage is probed)no
Answers HTTP 402 Payment Required (lower bound: only the homepage is probed)no
Sends noai / noimageai directivesno
Refused our fetcher (403 / challenge)no

robots.txt as recorded sha256 4ad9a11ef63a567b…

User-agent: *
Disallow: /forward
Disallow: /traffic
Disallow: /mm_track
Disallow: /dl_track
Disallow: /_uac/adpage.html
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /amp-proxy/
Disallow: /auth
Disallow: /login
Disallow: /logout
Disallow: /config
Disallow: /_/authenticate/

Sitemap: https://www.aol.com/sitemap_index.xml
Sitemap: https://www.aol.com/o2-seo-sitemap/o2-index-video-sitemap.xml.gz

robots.txt versions

FromThroughStateVersion
2026-10-262026-10-27ok 20025f13d669345

Timeline of changes

DateWhat changed
No changes since the first observation (2026-10-26).

Reconstructed history (Common Crawl)

From Common Crawl's robots.txt captures: what CCBot was served, one crawl per quarter. A separate series from the daily observations above; a 403 here means Common Crawl was refused, not this ledger.

CrawlHostStateGPTBotOAI-SearchBotChatGPT-UserClaudeBotClaude-SearchBotClaude-UserPerplexityBot
2026-09-21 CC-MAIN-2026-39www.aol.comok viewblocksallowsunknownblocksallowsunknownblocks
2025-09-15 CC-MAIN-2025-38www.aol.comok viewblocksallowsunknownblocksallowsunknownblocks
2024-09-16 CC-MAIN-2024-38www.aol.comok viewallowsallowsunknownallowsallowsunknownallows
2023-10-02 CC-MAIN-2023-40www.aol.comok viewallowsallowsunknownallowsallowsunknownallows
2022-10-03 CC-MAIN-2022-40www.aol.comok viewallowsallowsunknownallowsallowsunknownallows
2021-09-27 CC-MAIN-2021-39www.aol.comok viewallowsallowsunknownallowsallowsunknownallows
2020-09-28 CC-MAIN-2020-40www.aol.comok viewallowsallowsunknownallowsallowsunknownallows
2019-09-23 CC-MAIN-2019-39www.aol.comok viewallowsallowsunknownallowsallowsunknownallows
2018-09-24 CC-MAIN-2018-39www.aol.comok viewallowsallowsunknownallowsallowsunknownallows
2018-01-29 CC-MAIN-2018-05www.aol.comok viewallowsallowsunknownallowsallowsunknownallows
2017-10-23 CC-MAIN-2017-43www.aol.comok viewallowsallowsunknownallowsallowsunknownallows
2017-09-25 CC-MAIN-2017-39www.aol.comok viewallowsallowsunknownallowsallowsunknownallows
2017-07-24 CC-MAIN-2017-30www.aol.comok viewallowsallowsunknownallowsallowsunknownallows
2017-04-24 CC-MAIN-2017-17aol.comok viewallowsallowsunknownallowsallowsunknownallows
2017-01-23 CC-MAIN-2017-04www.aol.comok viewallowsallowsunknownallowsallowsunknownallows
2016-10-03 CC-MAIN-2016-40aol.comok viewallowsallowsunknownallowsallowsunknownallows
2016-09-05 CC-MAIN-2016-36aol.comok viewallowsallowsunknownallowsallowsunknownallows

Evidence

Every daily observation of aol.com is a leaf in that day's Merkle tree. Proof of the robots.txt line for 2026-10-27: audit path (JSON), day root and OpenTimestamps proof (complete (bitcoin block 973493)).

API: https://infrarabbit.com/crawlers/api/v1/policy/aol.com