sophos.com: what it tells AI crawlers

On 27 October 2026, sophos.com's robots.txt allowed all of GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot, Google-Extended, PerplexityBot and CCBot; it also published llms.txt.

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.sophos.com/robots.txt
unchanged since 2026-10-26 · sha256 332cae6d621808b8… · view as recorded

Per AI bot, 2026-10-27

User agentVerdictHow
GPTBotallowsnamed in its own group
OAI-SearchBotallowsnamed in its own group
ChatGPT-Userallowsnamed in its own group
ClaudeBotallowsnamed in its own group
Claude-SearchBotallowsno applicable rules
Claude-Userallowsno applicable rules
PerplexityBotallowsnamed in its own group
Perplexity-Userallowsno applicable rules
Googlebotallowsnamed in its own group
Google-Extendedallowsnamed in its own group
Applebot-Extendedallowsno applicable rules
CCBotallowsno applicable rules
Bytespiderallowsno applicable rules
Meta-ExternalAgentallowsno applicable rules
Amazonbotblocksnamed in its own group
Amzn-SearchBotallowsnamed in its own group
Amzn-Userallowsnamed in its own group
Andibotallowsnamed in its own group
anthropic-aiallowsnamed in its own group
DeepSeekBotblocksnamed in its own group
ExaBotallowsnamed in its own group
FirecrawlAgentallowsnamed in its own group
PetalBotblocksnamed in its own group
PhindBotallowsnamed in its own group
YouBotallowsnamed in its own group

Other signals

Publishes /llms.txtyes
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

llms.txt: "Sophos: Defeat Cyberattacks with AI-Native Security", 25,391 bytes, 126 links.

robots.txt as recorded sha256 332cae6d621808b8…

# robots.txt for www.sophos.com (generated November 2025)

# Disallow internal or non-public endpoints (update these for content stack)
#User-agent: *
#Disallow: /admin/
#Disallow: /internal/
#Disallow: /private/
#Disallow: /error/

# Allow all other content, including documentation, downloads and product pages.
Allow: /

#  Allow the LLM policy file
Allow: /llms.txt

# Sitemaps for supported locales
Sitemap: https://www.sophos.com/en-us/sitemap.xml
Sitemap: https://www.sophos.com/en-gb/sitemap.xml
Sitemap: https://www.sophos.com/de-de/sitemap.xml
Sitemap: https://www.sophos.com/es-es/sitemap.xml
Sitemap: https://www.sophos.com/it-it/sitemap.xml
Sitemap: https://www.sophos.com/fr-fr/sitemap.xml
Sitemap: https://www.sophos.com/ja-jp/sitemap.xml
Sitemap: https://www.sophos.com/pt-br/sitemap.xml
Sitemap: https://www.sophos.com/zh-cn/sitemap.xml

# video sitemap
Sitemap: https://www.sophos.com/video-sitemap.xml


# Allow AI Search and Agent Crawlers

User-agent: Anthropic-ai
Allow: /

User-agent: ClaudeBot
Allow: /

User-agent: Bingbot
Allow: /

User-agent: BingAI
Allow: /

User-agent: BingPreview
Allow: /

User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Allow: /

User-agent: CopilotBot
Allow: /

User-agent: Googlebot
Allow: /

User-agent: Google-Extended
Allow: /

User-agent: GPTBot
Allow: /

User-agent: LlamaBot
Allow: /

User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /

User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /

User-agent: xAI-Bot
Allow: /

User-agent: Amzn-SearchBot
Allow: /

User-agent: Amzn-User
Allow: /

User-agent: Amazonbot
Disallow: /

User-agent: FirecrawlAgent 
Allow: / 

User-agent: AndiBot 
Allow: / 

User-agent: ExaBot 
Allow: / 

User-agent: PhindBot 
Allow: / 

User-agent: YouBot 
Allow: /

User-agent: PetalBot
Disallow: /

# Disallow specific LLM crawler
User-agent: DeepSeekBot
Disallow: /

robots.txt versions

FromThroughStateVersion
2026-10-262026-10-27ok 200332cae6d6218

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.sophos.comok viewallowsallowsunknownallowsallowsunknownallows
2025-09-15 CC-MAIN-2025-38www.sophos.comok viewpartialpartialunknownpartialpartialunknownpartial
2024-09-16 CC-MAIN-2024-38www.sophos.comok viewpartialpartialunknownpartialpartialunknownpartial
2023-10-02 CC-MAIN-2023-40www.sophos.comok viewpartialpartialunknownpartialpartialunknownpartial
2022-10-03 CC-MAIN-2022-40www.sophos.comok viewpartialpartialunknownpartialpartialunknownpartial
2021-09-27 CC-MAIN-2021-39www.sophos.comok viewpartialpartialunknownpartialpartialunknownpartial
2020-09-28 CC-MAIN-2020-40www.sophos.comok viewpartialpartialunknownpartialpartialunknownpartial
2019-09-23 CC-MAIN-2019-39www.sophos.comok viewpartialpartialunknownpartialpartialunknownpartial
2018-09-24 CC-MAIN-2018-39www.sophos.comok viewpartialpartialunknownpartialpartialunknownpartial
2017-09-25 CC-MAIN-2017-39sophos.comredirect-onlyunknownunknownunknownunknownunknownunknownunknown
2017-07-24 CC-MAIN-2017-30www.sophos.comok viewallowsallowsunknownallowsallowsunknownallows
2017-04-24 CC-MAIN-2017-17sophos.comredirect-onlyunknownunknownunknownunknownunknownunknownunknown
2017-01-23 CC-MAIN-2017-04sophos.comredirect-onlyunknownunknownunknownunknownunknownunknownunknown
2016-10-03 CC-MAIN-2016-40www.sophos.comredirect-onlyunknownunknownunknownunknownunknownunknownunknown
2016-09-05 CC-MAIN-2016-36www.sophos.comok viewallowsallowsunknownallowsallowsunknownallows

Evidence

Every daily observation of sophos.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/sophos.com