msn.com: what it tells AI crawlers

On 28 October 2026, msn.com's robots.txt fully blocked GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot, 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.msn.com/robots.txt
unchanged since 2026-10-26 · sha256 aefbffa0a0a083e3… · view as recorded
The * group: allows applies to every agent without its own group

Per AI bot, 2026-10-28

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	blocks	named in its own group
Claude-User	blocks	named in its own 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
anthropic-ai	blocks	named in its own group
Applebot	blocks	named in its own group
bedrockbot	blocks	named in its own group
Claude-Web	blocks	named in its own group
cohere-ai	blocks	named in its own group
cohere-training-data-crawler	blocks	named in its own group
Cotoyogi	blocks	named in its own group
DeepSeekBot	blocks	named in its own group
Diffbot	blocks	named in its own group
DuckAssistBot	blocks	named in its own group
FacebookBot	blocks	named in its own group
FriendlyCrawler	blocks	named in its own group
Google-CloudVertexBot	blocks	named in its own group
GoogleOther	blocks	named in its own group
GoogleOther-Image	blocks	named in its own group
GoogleOther-Video	blocks	named in its own group
iaskspider	blocks	named in its own group
ICC-Crawler	blocks	named in its own group
ImagesiftBot	blocks	named in its own group
ISSCyberRiskCrawler	blocks	named in its own group
KunatoCrawler	blocks	named in its own group
meta-externalfetcher	blocks	named in its own group
MistralAI-User	blocks	named in its own group
omgili	blocks	named in its own group
omgilibot	blocks	named in its own group
PanguBot	blocks	named in its own group
QualifiedBot	blocks	named in its own group
Scrapy	blocks	named in its own group
TikTokSpider	blocks	named in its own group
Timpibot	blocks	named in its own group
VelenPublicWebCrawler	blocks	named in its own group
WARDBot	blocks	named in its own group
Webzio-Extended	blocks	named in its own group
WRTNBot	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 aefbffa0a0a083e3…

User-agent: *
Disallow: /*/health/search/filter
Disallow: /spartan
Disallow: /pt-ao
Disallow: /*preview=
Disallow: /*/autos/marketplace/product/
Disallow: /*/cars/marketplace/product/
Disallow: /*?item=
Disallow: /*&item=
Disallow: /codeCoverage
Disallow: /vpBaselines
Disallow: /msnBaselines
Disallow: /*/studio
Disallow: /*/indexnowdelete/
Allow: /*/shopping/*/ar-
Allow: /*/shopping/*/ss-
Allow: /*/shopping/*/vi-
Disallow: /*/shopping/

User-agent: AdsBot-Google
Allow: /
Disallow: /*/health/search/filter

User-agent: Verity
Crawl-delay: 3
Disallow: /*/health/search/filter
Disallow: /spartan
Disallow: /pt-ao
Disallow: /*preview=
Disallow: /*/autos/marketplace/product/
Disallow: /*/cars/marketplace/product/
Disallow: /*?item=
Disallow: /*&item=
Disallow: /codeCoverage
Disallow: /vpBaselines
Disallow: /msnBaselines
Disallow: /*/studio
Disallow: /*/indexnowdelete/
Allow: /*/shopping/*/ar-
Allow: /*/shopping/*/ss-
Allow: /*/shopping/*/vi-
Disallow: /*/shopping/

User-agent: ias_crawler
Crawl-delay: 0.1
Disallow: /*/health/search/filter
Disallow: /spartan
Disallow: /pt-ao
Disallow: /*preview=
Disallow: /*/autos/marketplace/product/
Disallow: /*/cars/marketplace/product/
Disallow: /*?item=
Disallow: /*&item=
Disallow: /codeCoverage
Disallow: /vpBaselines
Disallow: /msnBaselines
Disallow: /*/studio
Disallow: /*/indexnowdelete/
Allow: /*/shopping/*/ar-
Allow: /*/shopping/*/ss-
Allow: /*/shopping/*/vi-
Disallow: /*/shopping/

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google
Crawl-delay: 0.5
Disallow: /*/health/search/filter
Disallow: /spartan
Disallow: /pt-ao
Disallow: /*preview=
Disallow: /*/autos/marketplace/product/
Disallow: /*/cars/marketplace/product/
Disallow: /*?item=
Disallow: /*&item=
Disallow: /codeCoverage
Disallow: /vpBaselines
Disallow: /msnBaselines
Disallow: /*/studio
Disallow: /*/indexnowdelete/
Allow: /*/shopping/*/ar-
Allow: /*/shopping/*/ss-
Allow: /*/shopping/*/vi-
Disallow: /*/shopping/

User-agent: CriteoBot
Crawl-delay: 0.5
Disallow: /*/health/search/filter
Disallow: /spartan
Disallow: /pt-ao
Disallow: /*preview=
Disallow: /*/autos/marketplace/product/
Disallow: /*/cars/marketplace/product/
Disallow: /*?item=
Disallow: /*&item=
Disallow: /codeCoverage
Disallow: /vpBaselines
Disallow: /msnBaselines
Disallow: /*/studio
Disallow: /*/indexnowdelete/
Allow: /*/shopping/*/ar-
Allow: /*/shopping/*/ss-
Allow: /*/shopping/*/vi-
Disallow: /*/shopping/

User-agent: yandex.com/bot
Crawl-delay: 1
Disallow: /*/weather/
Disallow: /*/clima/
Disallow: /*/cuaca/
Disallow: /*/eltiempo/
Disallow: /*/el-tiempo/
Disallow: /*/havadurumu/
Disallow: /*/idojaras/
Disallow: /*/meteo/
Disallow: /*/meteorologia/
Disallow: /*/pocasi/
Disallow: /*/pogoda/
Disallow: /*/saa/
Disallow: /*/vader/
Disallow: /*/vejr/
Disallow: /*/weer/
Disallow: /*/wetter/
Allow: /*/shopping/*/ar-
Allow: /*/shopping/*/ss-
Allow: /*/shopping/*/vi-
Disallow: /*/shopping/

User-agent: admantx-ussy04/3.2
Allow: /

User-agent: TTD-Content
Allow: /

User-agent: AmazonAdBot
Allow: /

User-agent: AI2Bot
User-agent: Ai2Bot-Dolma
User-agent: Amazonbot
User-agent: anthropic-ai
User-agent: Applebot
User-agent: Applebot-Extended
User-agent: Bedrockbot
User-agent: Bytespider
User-agent: CCBot
User-agent: ChatGLM
User-agent: ChatGPT-User
User-agent: ClaudeBot
User-agent: Claude-User
User-agent: Claude-SearchBot 
User-agent: Claude-Web
User-agent: cohere-ai
User-agent: cohere-training-data-crawler
User-agent: Cotoyogi
User-agent: DeepSeekBot
User-agent: Diffbot
User-agent: DuckAssistBot
User-agent: FacebookBot
User-agent: FriendlyCrawler
User-agent: Gensparkbot 
User-agent: Google-CloudVertexBot
User-agent: Google-Extended
User-agent: GoogleOther
User-agent: GoogleOther-Image
User-agent: GoogleOther-Video
User-agent: GPTBot
User-agent: Grok
User-agent: iaskspider/2.0
User-agent: ICC-Crawler
User-agent: ImagesiftBot
User-agent: Img2dataset
User-agent: ISSCyberRiskCrawler
User-agent: Kangaroo Bot
User-agent: KunatoCrawler
User-agent: magpie-crawler
User-agent: Meltwater
User-agent: Meta-ExternalAgent
User-agent: Meta-ExternalFetcher
User-agent: MistralAI
User-agent: MistralAI-User
User-agent: Momentumbot
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
User-agent: omgili
User-agent: Omgilibot
User-agent: Other
User-agent: PanguBot
User-agent: Perplexity-ai
User-agent: PerplexityBot
User-agent: Perplexity-User
User-agent: QualifiedBot
User-agent: Scrapy
User-agent: Seekr
User-agent: Sidetrade indexer bot
User-agent: TikTokSpider
User-agent: Timpibot
User-agent: Twitterbot
User-agent: VelenPublicWebCrawler
User-agent: WARDBot
User-agent: Webzio-Extended
User-agent: WRTNBot
User-agent: YouBot
Disallow: /

Sitemap: https://www.msn.com/sitemaps/casualgames/sitemap-index.xml
Sitemap: https://www.msn.com/sitemaps/consumption/index.xml
Sitemap: https://www.msn.com/sitemaps/health/health-sitemap-index.xml
Sitemap: https://www.msn.com/staticsb/statics/latest/0/casualgames/sitemaps/sitemap-index.xml
Sitemap: https://www.msn.com/staticsb/statics/latest/0/finance/sitemaps/sitemap-index.xml
Sitemap: https://www.msn.com/sitemaps/weather/sitemap-index.xml

robots.txt versions

From	Through	State	Version
2026-10-26	2026-10-28	ok 200	`aefbffa0a0a0`

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
2026-09-21 CC-MAIN-2026-39	www.msn.com	ok view	blocks	blocks	unknown	blocks	blocks	unknown	blocks
2025-09-15 CC-MAIN-2025-38	www.msn.com	ok view	blocks	blocks	unknown	blocks	allows	unknown	blocks
2024-09-16 CC-MAIN-2024-38	www.msn.com	ok view	blocks	allows	unknown	allows	allows	unknown	blocks
2023-10-02 CC-MAIN-2023-40	www.msn.com	ok view	allows	allows	unknown	allows	allows	unknown	allows
2022-10-03 CC-MAIN-2022-40	www.msn.com	ok view	allows	allows	unknown	allows	allows	unknown	allows
2021-09-27 CC-MAIN-2021-39	www.msn.com	ok view	allows	allows	unknown	allows	allows	unknown	allows
2020-09-28 CC-MAIN-2020-40	www.msn.com	ok view	allows	allows	unknown	allows	allows	unknown	allows
2019-09-23 CC-MAIN-2019-39	www.msn.com	ok view	allows	allows	unknown	allows	allows	unknown	allows
2018-09-24 CC-MAIN-2018-39	www.msn.com	ok view	allows	allows	unknown	allows	allows	unknown	allows
2018-07-23 CC-MAIN-2018-30	www.msn.com	ok view	allows	allows	unknown	allows	allows	unknown	allows
2018-04-23 CC-MAIN-2018-17	www.msn.com	ok view	allows	allows	unknown	allows	allows	unknown	allows
2018-01-29 CC-MAIN-2018-05	www.msn.com	ok view	allows	allows	unknown	allows	allows	unknown	allows
2017-10-23 CC-MAIN-2017-43	www.msn.com	ok view	allows	allows	unknown	allows	allows	unknown	allows
2017-09-25 CC-MAIN-2017-39	www.msn.com	ok view	allows	allows	unknown	allows	allows	unknown	allows
2017-07-24 CC-MAIN-2017-30	www.msn.com	ok view	allows	allows	unknown	allows	allows	unknown	allows
2017-04-24 CC-MAIN-2017-17	msn.com	ok view	allows	allows	unknown	allows	allows	unknown	allows
2017-01-23 CC-MAIN-2017-04	msn.com	ok view	allows	allows	unknown	allows	allows	unknown	allows
2016-10-03 CC-MAIN-2016-40	msn.com	ok view	allows	allows	unknown	allows	allows	unknown	allows
2016-09-05 CC-MAIN-2016-36	msn.com	ok view	allows	allows	unknown	allows	allows	unknown	allows

Evidence

Every daily observation of msn.com 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 (complete (bitcoin block 973640)).

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