theconversation.com: what it tells AI crawlers
On 27 October 2026, theconversation.com's robots.txt fully blocked GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot, 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 10k (Tranco)
- robots.txt
- ok (HTTP 200) · https://theconversation.com/robots.txt
unchanged since 2026-10-26 · sha2561423b17b4d2b36d7…· 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 | 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 |
| AddSearchBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| AgentTimes | blocks | named in its own group |
| aiHitBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| AIWebIndex | blocks | named in its own group |
| amazon-kendra | blocks | named in its own group |
| amazon-QBusiness | blocks | named in its own group |
| AmazonBuyForMe | blocks | named in its own group |
| Amzn-SearchBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| Amzn-User | blocks | named in its own group |
| Andibot | blocks | named in its own group |
| Anomura | 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 |
| Applebot | blocks | named in its own group |
| Aranet-SearchBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| atlassian-bot | blocks | named in its own group |
| Awario | blocks | named in its own group |
| AzureAI-SearchBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| bedrockbot | blocks | named in its own group |
| Bravebot | blocks | named in its own group |
| Brightbot | blocks | named in its own group |
| BuddyBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| ChatGLM-Spider | blocks | named in its own group |
| Claude-Code | blocks | named in its own group |
| Claude-Web | blocks | named in its own group |
| Cloudflare-AutoRAG | blocks | named in its own group |
| CloudVertexBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| Code | 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 |
| CragCrawler | blocks | named in its own group |
| Crawlspace | blocks | named in its own group |
| Cursor | blocks | named in its own group |
| DeepSeekBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| Devin | blocks | named in its own group |
| Diffbot | blocks | named in its own group |
| DuckAssistBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| EchoboxBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| ExaBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| ExaSearchBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| FacebookBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| Factset_spyderbot | blocks | named in its own group |
| FirecrawlAgent | blocks | named in its own group |
| FriendlyCrawler | blocks | named in its own group |
| GeistHaus-PageFetcher | blocks | named in its own group |
| Gemini-Deep-Research | blocks | named in its own group |
| Google-Agent | blocks | named in its own group |
| Google-CloudVertexBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| Google-Firebase | blocks | named in its own group |
| Google-Gemini-CLI | blocks | named in its own group |
| Google-NotebookLM | blocks | named in its own group |
| GoogleAgent-Mariner | blocks | named in its own group |
| GoogleAgent-URLContext | 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 |
| HenkBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| iAskBot | 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 |
| imageSpider | blocks | named in its own group |
| ISSCyberRiskCrawler | blocks | named in its own group |
| kagi-fetcher | blocks | named in its own group |
| Kimi-User | blocks | named in its own group |
| KlaviyoAIBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| KunatoCrawler | blocks | named in its own group |
| laion-huggingface-processor | blocks | named in its own group |
| LAIONDownloader | blocks | named in its own group |
| LCC | blocks | named in its own group |
| Lightpanda | blocks | named in its own group |
| LinerBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| LinkupBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| Manus-User | blocks | named in its own group |
| meta-externalfetcher | blocks | named in its own group |
| meta-webindexer | blocks | named in its own group |
| MistralAI-User | blocks | named in its own group |
| Mozilla-Tabstack | blocks | named in its own group |
| MyCentralAIScraperBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| NagetBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| newsai | blocks | named in its own group |
| NotebookLM | blocks | named in its own group |
| NovaAct | blocks | named in its own group |
| omgili | blocks | named in its own group |
| omgilibot | blocks | named in its own group |
| OpenAI | blocks | named in its own group |
| opencode | blocks | named in its own group |
| Operator | blocks | named in its own group |
| PanguBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| Panscient | blocks | named in its own group |
| PetalBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| PhindBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| Poggio-Citations | blocks | named in its own group |
| QualifiedBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| Querit-SearchBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| QueritBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| QuillBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| Reflectionbot | blocks | named in its own group |
| SBIntuitionsBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| Scrapy | blocks | named in its own group |
| SemrushBot-OCOB | blocks | named in its own group |
| SemrushBot-SWA | blocks | named in its own group |
| Shap-User | blocks | named in its own group |
| ShapBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| Spider | blocks | named in its own group |
| TavilyBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| TerraCotta | blocks | named in its own group |
| Thinkbot | blocks | named in its own group |
| TikTokSpider | blocks | named in its own group |
| Timpibot | blocks | named in its own group |
| TongyiBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| Trae | blocks | named in its own group |
| TwinAgent | blocks | named in its own group |
| UseAI | 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 |
| wpbot | blocks | named in its own group |
| WRTNBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| YaK | blocks | named in its own group |
| YandexAdditional | blocks | named in its own group |
| YandexAdditionalBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| YiyanBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| YouBot | blocks | named in its own group |
| ZanistaBot | 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 d48cfe468efed985…
User-Agent: * Disallow: /metrics/ Disallow: /auth/ Disallow: /content/ Disallow: /comments/* Disallow: /sign_in? Disallow: /sign_up? Disallow: /become-an-author? Disallow: /profiles/*/articles Disallow: /profiles/*/activities Disallow: /*/search? Disallow: /experts/search? Disallow: /experts/search/* Disallow: /pb/* Sitemap: https://theconversation.com/sitemap.xml Sitemap: https://theconversation.com/africa/sitemap_news.xml Sitemap: https://theconversation.com/au/sitemap_news.xml Sitemap: https://theconversation.com/br/sitemap_news.xml Sitemap: https://theconversation.com/ca/sitemap_news.xml Sitemap: https://theconversation.com/ca-fr/sitemap_news.xml Sitemap: https://theconversation.com/es/sitemap_news.xml Sitemap: https://theconversation.com/europe/sitemap_news.xml Sitemap: https://theconversation.com/fr/sitemap_news.xml Sitemap: https://theconversation.com/global/sitemap_news.xml Sitemap: https://theconversation.com/id/sitemap_news.xml Sitemap: https://theconversation.com/nz/sitemap_news.xml Sitemap: https://theconversation.com/uk/sitemap_news.xml Sitemap: https://theconversation.com/us/sitemap_news.xml User-agent: AI2Bot User-agent: AddSearchBot User-agent: Ai2Bot-Dolma User-agent: Amazonbot User-agent: Andibot User-agent: Applebot User-agent: Applebot-Extended User-agent: Awario User-agent: Brightbot 1.0 User-agent: Bytespider User-agent: CCBot User-agent: ChatGPT Agent User-agent: ChatGPT-User User-agent: Claude-SearchBot User-agent: Claude-User User-agent: Claude-Web User-agent: ClaudeBot User-agent: CloudVertexBot User-agent: Cotoyogi User-agent: Crawlspace User-agent: Datenbank Crawler User-agent: Devin User-agent: Diffbot User-agent: DuckAssistBot User-agent: Echobot Bot User-agent: EchoboxBot User-agent: FacebookBot User-agent: Factset_spyderbot User-agent: FirecrawlAgent User-agent: FriendlyCrawler User-agent: GPTBot User-agent: Gemini-Deep-Research User-agent: Google-CloudVertexBot User-agent: Google-Extended User-agent: Google-Firebase User-agent: GoogleAgent-Mariner User-agent: GoogleOther User-agent: GoogleOther-Image User-agent: GoogleOther-Video User-agent: HawaiiBot User-agent: ICC-Crawler User-agent: ISSCyberRiskCrawler User-agent: ImagesiftBot User-agent: Kangaroo Bot User-agent: LinerBot User-agent: Meta-ExternalAgent User-agent: Meta-ExternalFetcher User-agent: MistralAI-User User-agent: MistralAI-User/1.0 User-agent: MyCentralAIScraperBot User-agent: NovaAct User-agent: OAI-SearchBot User-agent: OpenAI User-agent: Operator User-agent: PanguBot User-agent: Panscient User-agent: Perplexity-User User-agent: PerplexityBot User-agent: PetalBot User-agent: PhindBot User-agent: Poseidon Research Crawler User-agent: QualifiedBot User-agent: QuillBot User-agent: SBIntuitionsBot User-agent: Scrapy User-agent: SemrushBot-OCOB User-agent: SemrushBot-SWA User-agent: ShapBot User-agent: Sidetrade indexer bot User-agent: Thinkbot User-agent: TikTokSpider User-agent: Timpibot User-agent: VelenPublicWebCrawler User-agent: WARDBot User-agent: Webzio-Extended User-agent: YaK User-agent: YandexAdditional User-agent: YandexAdditionalBot User-agent: YouBot User-agent: aiHitBot User-agent: anthropic-ai User-agent: bedrockbot User-agent: bigsur.ai User-agent: cohere-ai User-agent: cohere-training-data-crawler User-agent: dobot User-agent: iaskspider/2.0 User-agent: img2dataset User-agent: meta-externalagent User-agent: meta-externalfetcher User-agent: netEstate Imprint Crawler User-agent: omgili User-agent: omgilibot User-agent: panscient.com User-agent: quillbot.com User-agent: wpbot Disallow: /
robots.txt versions
| From | Through | State | Version | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-26 | 2026-10-27 | ok 200 | 1423b17b4d2b |
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 | theconversation.com | ok view | blocks | blocks | unknown | blocks | blocks | unknown | blocks |
| 2025-09-15 CC-MAIN-2025-38 | theconversation.com | ok view | blocks | blocks | unknown | blocks | blocks | unknown | blocks |
| 2024-09-16 CC-MAIN-2024-38 | theconversation.com | ok view | blocks | allows | unknown | blocks | allows | unknown | allows |
| 2023-10-02 CC-MAIN-2023-40 | theconversation.com | ok view | blocks | allows | unknown | allows | allows | unknown | allows |
| 2022-10-03 CC-MAIN-2022-40 | theconversation.com | ok view | allows | allows | unknown | allows | allows | unknown | allows |
| 2021-09-27 CC-MAIN-2021-39 | theconversation.com | ok view | allows | allows | unknown | allows | allows | unknown | allows |
| 2020-09-28 CC-MAIN-2020-40 | theconversation.com | ok view | allows | allows | unknown | allows | allows | unknown | allows |
| 2019-09-23 CC-MAIN-2019-39 | theconversation.com | ok view | allows | allows | unknown | allows | allows | unknown | allows |
| 2018-09-24 CC-MAIN-2018-39 | theconversation.com | ok view | allows | allows | unknown | allows | allows | unknown | allows |
| 2017-09-25 CC-MAIN-2017-39 | theconversation.com | ok view | allows | allows | unknown | allows | allows | unknown | allows |
| 2017-01-23 CC-MAIN-2017-04 | theconversation.com | ok view | allows | allows | unknown | allows | allows | unknown | allows |
| 2016-10-03 CC-MAIN-2016-40 | theconversation.com | ok view | allows | allows | unknown | allows | allows | unknown | allows |
| 2016-09-05 CC-MAIN-2016-36 | theconversation.com | ok view | allows | allows | unknown | allows | allows | unknown | allows |
Evidence
Every daily observation of theconversation.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/theconversation.com