bbc.co.uk: what it tells AI crawlers
On 27 October 2026, bbc.co.uk's robots.txt fully blocked GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended, PerplexityBot 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.bbc.co.uk/robots.txt
unchanged since 2026-10-26 · sha2561c16746a8d02e677…· view as recorded - The * group
- allows applies to every agent without its own group
Per AI bot, 2026-10-27
| User agent | Verdict | How |
|---|---|---|
| GPTBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| OAI-SearchBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| ChatGPT-User | blocks | named in its own group |
| ClaudeBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| Claude-SearchBot | allows | through the * group |
| Claude-User | allows | through the * group |
| PerplexityBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| Perplexity-User | blocks | named in its own group |
| Googlebot | allows | through the * group |
| Google-Extended | blocks | named in its own group |
| Applebot-Extended | blocks | named in its own group |
| CCBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| Bytespider | blocks | named in its own group |
| Meta-ExternalAgent | blocks | named in its own group |
| Amazonbot | blocks | named in its own group |
| Amzn-SearchBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| Amzn-User | blocks | named in its own group |
| anthropic-ai | blocks | named in its own group |
| ApifyBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| ApifyWebsiteContentCrawler | blocks | named in its own group |
| Brightbot | blocks | named in its own group |
| Claude-Web | blocks | named in its own group |
| CloudflareBrowserRenderingCrawler | blocks | named in its own group |
| cohere-ai | blocks | named in its own group |
| Diffbot | blocks | named in its own group |
| Diffbot-User | blocks | named in its own group |
| ExaBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| FirecrawlAgent | blocks | named in its own group |
| Google-CloudVertexBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| omgili | blocks | named in its own group |
| omgilibot | blocks | named in its own group |
| PetalBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| Scrapy | blocks | named in its own group |
| ShapBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| TavilyBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| YandexAdditional | blocks | named in its own group |
| YandexAdditionalBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| YouBot | blocks | named in its own group |
Other signals
| Publishes /llms.txt | no |
| Publishes /ai.txt | no |
| Publishes /.well-known/tdmrep.json | no |
| Reserves TDM rights (TDMRep file, header or meta) | no |
| Declares Content Signals (robots.txt or header) | no |
| Says ai-train=no in a Content Signal | no |
| 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 directives | no |
| Refused our fetcher (403 / challenge) | no |
robots.txt as recorded sha256 186af6f92183b37c…
# v.4.8.0 User-agent: * Sitemap: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sitemap.xml Sitemap: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sitemaps/https-index-uk-archive.xml Sitemap: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sitemaps/https-index-uk-news.xml Disallow: /cbbc/search$ Disallow: /cbbc/search/ Disallow: /cbbc/search? Disallow: /cbeebies/search$ Disallow: /cbeebies/search/ Disallow: /cbeebies/search? Disallow: /chwilio/ Disallow: /chwilio$ Disallow: /chwilio? Disallow: /iplayer/bigscreen/ Disallow: /iplayer/cbbc/episodes/ Disallow: /iplayer/cbbc/search Disallow: /iplayer/cbeebies/episodes/ Disallow: /iplayer/cbeebies/search Disallow: /iplayer/search Disallow: /indepthtoolkit/smallprox$ Disallow: /indepthtoolkit/smallprox/ Disallow: /modules/musicnav/language/ Disallow: /radio/aod/ Disallow: /radio/aod$ Disallow: /radio/player/ Disallow: /radio/player$ Disallow: /search/ Disallow: /search$ Disallow: /search?
robots.txt versions
| From | Through | State | Version | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-26 | 2026-10-27 | ok 200 | 1c16746a8d02 |
Timeline of changes
| Date | What 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.
| Crawl | Host | State | GPTBot | OAI-SearchBot | ChatGPT-User | ClaudeBot | Claude-SearchBot | Claude-User | PerplexityBot |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025-09-15 CC-MAIN-2025-38 | www.bbc.co.uk | ok view | blocks | blocks | unknown | blocks | allows | unknown | blocks |
| 2023-10-02 CC-MAIN-2023-40 | www.bbc.co.uk | ok view | allows | allows | unknown | allows | allows | unknown | allows |
| 2021-09-27 CC-MAIN-2021-39 | www.bbc.co.uk | ok view | allows | allows | unknown | allows | allows | unknown | allows |
| 2020-09-28 CC-MAIN-2020-40 | www.bbc.co.uk | ok view | allows | allows | unknown | allows | allows | unknown | allows |
| 2019-09-23 CC-MAIN-2019-39 | www.bbc.co.uk | ok view | allows | allows | unknown | allows | allows | unknown | allows |
| 2018-09-24 CC-MAIN-2018-39 | www.bbc.co.uk | ok view | allows | allows | unknown | allows | allows | unknown | allows |
| 2017-09-25 CC-MAIN-2017-39 | www.bbc.co.uk | ok view | partial | partial | unknown | partial | partial | unknown | partial |
| 2017-07-24 CC-MAIN-2017-30 | www.bbc.co.uk | ok view | allows | allows | unknown | allows | allows | unknown | allows |
| 2017-04-24 CC-MAIN-2017-17 | bbc.co.uk | ok view | allows | allows | unknown | allows | allows | unknown | allows |
| 2017-01-23 CC-MAIN-2017-04 | www.bbc.co.uk | ok view | allows | allows | unknown | allows | allows | unknown | allows |
| 2016-10-03 CC-MAIN-2016-40 | bbc.co.uk | ok view | allows | allows | unknown | allows | allows | unknown | allows |
| 2016-09-05 CC-MAIN-2016-36 | bbc.co.uk | ok view | allows | allows | unknown | allows | allows | unknown | allows |
Evidence
Every daily observation of bbc.co.uk 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/bbc.co.uk