vnexpress.net: what it tells AI crawlers

On 27 October 2026, vnexpress.net's robots.txt allowed all of 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://vnexpress.net/robots.txt
unchanged since 2026-10-27 · sha256 cb80f8bc213a10b9… · view as recorded
The * group
allows applies to every agent without its own group

Per AI bot, 2026-10-27

User agentVerdictHow
GPTBotallowsthrough the * group
OAI-SearchBotallowsnamed in its own group
ChatGPT-Userallowsnamed in its own group
ClaudeBotallowsthrough the * group
Claude-SearchBotallowsnamed in its own group
Claude-Userallowsnamed in its own group
PerplexityBotallowsnamed in its own group
Perplexity-Userallowsnamed in its own group
Googlebotallowsthrough the * group
Google-Extendedallowsthrough the * group
Applebot-Extendedallowsthrough the * group
CCBotallowsthrough the * group
Bytespiderallowsthrough the * group
Meta-ExternalAgentallowsthrough the * group
Amazonbotblocksnamed in its own group
Diffbotblocksnamed in its own group
DuckAssistBotallowsnamed in its own group
EchoboxBotblocksnamed in its own group
facebookexternalhitallowsnamed in its own group
FriendlyCrawlerblocksnamed in its own group
QuillBotblocksnamed in its own group
Scrapyblocksnamed in its own group
Timpibotblocksnamed in its own group
YouBotblocksnamed 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 36019990c12b479c…

User-agent: *
Allow: /
Allow: /ads.txt
Disallow: /.well-known/amphtml/apikey.pub
Sitemap: https://vnexpress.net/sitemap.xml
Sitemap: https://vnexpress.net/google-news-sitemap.xml

robots.txt versions

FromThroughStateVersion
2026-10-272026-10-27ok 200cb80f8bc213adiff with previous
2026-10-262026-10-26ok 20087cb383e5f97

Timeline of changes

DateWhat changed
2026-10-27robots.txt changed
2026-10-27now allows anthropic-ai (was block)
2026-10-27now allows Applebot-Extended (was block)
2026-10-27now allows Bytespider (was block)
2026-10-27now allows CCBot (was block)
2026-10-27now allows Claude-Web (was block)
2026-10-27now allows ClaudeBot (was block)
2026-10-27now allows cohere-ai (was block)
2026-10-27now allows Google-CloudVertexBot (was block)
2026-10-27now allows Google-Extended (was block)
2026-10-27now allows GPTBot (was block)
2026-10-27now allows ImagesiftBot (was block)
2026-10-27now allows MyCentralAIScraperBot (was block)
2026-10-27now allows omgili (was block)
2026-10-27now allows omgilibot (was block)

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

Evidence

Every daily observation of vnexpress.net 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/vnexpress.net