techcrunch.com: what it tells AI crawlers

On 27 October 2026, techcrunch.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://techcrunch.com/robots.txt
unchanged since 2026-10-26 · sha256 5fbefc8fdb1ded6f… · 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-Userblocksnamed in its own group
ClaudeBotblocksnamed in its own group
Claude-SearchBotallowsthrough the * group
Claude-Userallowsthrough the * group
PerplexityBotallowsthrough the * group
Perplexity-Userallowsthrough the * group
Googlebotallowsthrough the * group
Google-Extendedblocksnamed in its own group
Applebot-Extendedblocksnamed in its own 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
omgiliblocksnamed 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 1e9c8abc9d8b7a2e…

User-agent: *
Disallow: /search/
Disallow: /*?customize_changeset_uuid=*
# START YOAST BLOCK
# ---------------------------
User-agent: *
Disallow:

Sitemap: https://techcrunch.com/sitemap_index.xml
# ---------------------------
# END YOAST BLOCK

robots.txt versions

FromThroughStateVersion
2026-10-262026-10-28ok 2005fbefc8fdb1d

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-2026-39techcrunch.comok viewblocksallowsunknownblocksallowsunknownallows
2025-09-15 CC-MAIN-2025-38techcrunch.comok viewblocksallowsunknownblocksallowsunknownallows
2024-09-16 CC-MAIN-2024-38techcrunch.comok viewblocksallowsunknownblocksallowsunknownallows
2023-10-02 CC-MAIN-2023-40techcrunch.comok viewallowsallowsunknownallowsallowsunknownallows
2022-10-03 CC-MAIN-2022-40techcrunch.comok viewallowsallowsunknownallowsallowsunknownallows
2021-09-27 CC-MAIN-2021-39techcrunch.comok viewallowsallowsunknownallowsallowsunknownallows
2020-09-28 CC-MAIN-2020-40techcrunch.comok viewallowsallowsunknownallowsallowsunknownallows
2019-09-23 CC-MAIN-2019-39techcrunch.comok viewallowsallowsunknownallowsallowsunknownallows
2018-09-24 CC-MAIN-2018-39techcrunch.comok viewallowsallowsunknownallowsallowsunknownallows
2018-01-29 CC-MAIN-2018-05techcrunch.comok viewallowsallowsunknownallowsallowsunknownallows
2017-10-23 CC-MAIN-2017-43techcrunch.comok viewallowsallowsunknownallowsallowsunknownallows
2017-09-25 CC-MAIN-2017-39techcrunch.comok viewallowsallowsunknownallowsallowsunknownallows
2017-07-24 CC-MAIN-2017-30techcrunch.comok viewallowsallowsunknownallowsallowsunknownallows
2017-04-24 CC-MAIN-2017-17techcrunch.comok viewallowsallowsunknownallowsallowsunknownallows
2017-01-23 CC-MAIN-2017-04techcrunch.comok viewallowsallowsunknownallowsallowsunknownallows
2016-10-03 CC-MAIN-2016-40techcrunch.comok viewallowsallowsunknownallowsallowsunknownallows
2016-09-05 CC-MAIN-2016-36techcrunch.comok viewallowsallowsunknownallowsallowsunknownallows

Evidence

Every daily observation of techcrunch.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/techcrunch.com