bbc.co.uk: what it tells AI crawlers

On 28 October 2026, bbc.co.uk's robots.txt fully blocked GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended, PerplexityBot and CCBot.

Last verified 2026-10-29 03:59 UTC (daily run of 2026-10-28). 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 · sha256 1c16746a8d02e677… · view as recorded

The * group

allows applies to every agent without its own group

Per AI bot, 2026-10-28

Other signals

robots.txt as recorded sha256 1c16746a8d02e677…

# version: 20b91abf30af3b3b076745396ba368978384f4d7
# The BBC's Terms of Use: https://www.bbc.co.uk/terms
# - Explain the rules for using our services
# - Tell you what you can do with our content
#
# In short: Please use our site like a human, not a robot.
# That means:
# - No scraping, crawling, or systematic extraction of content 
# - No use of BBC content for training or fine-tuning AI models, including large language models (LLMs)
# - No retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), AI-powered search, agentic AI or grounding using BBC content
# - No creating datasets from BBC content
# - No text and data mining (TDM) under Article 4 of the EU Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market
# - No using BBC content to create summaries for your own use
# - No business use without permission (details: https://www.bbc.co.uk/usingthebbc/terms/can-i-use-bbc-content-for-my-business/)
# - The BBC reserves all rights in its content and expressly opts out of any statutory exceptions in any jurisdiction for text and data mining, as permitted by law
 
# TL;DR: Browse, read, watch, enjoy - like a human.
#

# HTTPS www.bbc.co.uk

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
Sitemap: https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/sitemap.xml
Sitemap: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/sitemap/sitemapindex.xml
Sitemap: https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/sitemap/sitemapindex.xml
Sitemap: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sitemaps/https-index-uk-archive_video.xml
Sitemap: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sitemaps/https-index-uk-video.xml
Sitemap: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sitemaps/sitemap-uk-ws-topics.xml
Sitemap: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/sitemap.xml
Sitemap: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sitemaps/sitemap-uk-topics.xml
Sitemap: https://www.bbc.co.uk/ideas/sitemap.xml
Sitemap: https://www.bbc.co.uk/tiny-happy-people/sitemap/sitemapindex.xml

Disallow: /asset/
Disallow: /backstage/bbc-login-help/
Disallow: /backstage/bbc-login-help$
Disallow: /bitesize/search$
Disallow: /bitesize/search/
Disallow: /bitesize/search?
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: /moderation/reports/
Disallow: /modules/musicnav/language/
Disallow: /news/0
Disallow: /radio/aod/
Disallow: /radio/aod$
Disallow: /radio/imda
Disallow: /radio/player/
Disallow: /radio/player$
Disallow: /search/
Disallow: /search$
Disallow: /search?
Disallow: /sport/alpha/
Disallow: /sounds/player/
Disallow: /sounds/player$
Disallow: /ugc$
Disallow: /ugc/
Disallow: /ugcsupport$
Disallow: /ugcsupport/
Disallow: /userinfo/
Disallow: /userinfo
Disallow: /food/favourites
Disallow: /food/menus/*/shopping-list
Disallow: /food/recipes/*/shopping-list
Disallow: /food/search*?*
Disallow: /sounds/search$
Disallow: /sounds/search/
Disallow: /sounds/search?
Disallow: /ws/includes
Disallow: /rd/search$
Disallow: /rd/search/
Disallow: /rd/search?
Disallow: /things/search$
Disallow: /things/search/
Disallow: /things/search?

User-agent: Amazonbot
Disallow: /

User-agent: magpie-crawler
Disallow: /

User-agent: CCBot
Disallow: /

User-Agent: omgili
Disallow: /
 
User-Agent: omgilibot
Disallow: /

User-agent: ClaudeBot
Disallow: /
 
User-agent: Claude-Web
Disallow: /
 
User-agent: anthropic-ai
Disallow: /
 
User-agent: cohere-ai
Disallow: /

User-agent: Bytespider
Disallow: /

User-agent: PetalBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: Scrapy
Disallow: /

User-agent: Applebot-Extended
Disallow: /

User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Disallow: /

User-agent: Google-CloudVertexBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: Google-Extended
Disallow: /

User-Agent: PerplexityBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: Perplexity-User
Disallow: /

User-agent: meta-externalagent
Disallow: /

User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: YandexAdditional
Disallow: /

User-agent: YandexAdditionalBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: TurnitinBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: Brightbot
Disallow: /

User-agent: ApifyBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: ApifyWebsiteContentCrawler
Disallow: /

User-agent: Diffbot
Disallow: /

User-agent: Diffbot-User
Disallow: /

User-agent: ExaBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: TavilyBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: ShapBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: YouBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: FirecrawlAgent
Disallow:/

User-agent: Amzn-SearchBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: Amzn-User
Disallow: /

User-agent: ProRataInc
Disallow: /

User-agent: CloudflareBrowserRenderingCrawler
Disallow: /

User-agent: AhrefsBot
Disallow: /

robots.txt versions

Timeline of changes

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.

Evidence

Every daily observation of bbc.co.uk is a leaf in that day's Merkle tree. Proof of the robots.txt line for 2026-10-28: audit path (JSON), day root and OpenTimestamps proof (pending (4 calendars)).

API: https://infrarabbit.com/crawlers/api/v1/policy/bbc.co.uk