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USA Today (usatoday.com): AI Crawler Rules in robots.txt

GPTBot is disallowed by usatoday.com's robots.txt (checked ). In all, the file disallows 17 of the 17 AI bot tokens we monitor (100%). Observed Source · Methodology

What this means for you

robots.txt on this site disallows 17 of the 17 AI agents we monitor: 4 of 4 search and answer bots (OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, DuckAssistBot), 3 of 3 user-requested fetchers (ChatGPT-User, Claude-User, Perplexity-User) and 10 of 10 other crawlers.

An assistant that follows robots.txt may not read or cite this site when a user asks about it, because the disallowed agents are the ones that fetch pages for answers.

To publish rules like these for your own site, see How to Block GPTBot and Other AI Crawlers in robots.txt. A host or CDN can also block AI crawlers on its own, which robots.txt does not show: our hosting checker names the provider behind any domain, and our hosting price tracker shows what the plans we check cost.

What robots.txt says

17 of 17 bots disallowed on /

robots.txt disallows 17 of 17 monitored bots on path /.

  • Amazonbot · Disallowed · Disallow: /
  • anthropic-ai · Disallowed · Disallow: /
  • Applebot-Extended · Disallowed · Disallow: /
  • Bytespider · Disallowed · Disallow: /
  • CCBot · Disallowed · Disallow: /
  • ChatGPT-User · Disallowed · Disallow: /
  • Claude-SearchBot · Disallowed · Disallow: /
  • Claude-User · Disallowed · Disallow: /
  • ClaudeBot · Disallowed · Disallow: /
  • cohere-ai · Disallowed · Disallow: /
  • DuckAssistBot · Disallowed · Disallow: /
  • Google-Extended · Disallowed · Disallow: /
  • GPTBot · Disallowed · Disallow: /
  • meta-externalagent · Disallowed · Disallow: /
  • OAI-SearchBot · Disallowed · Disallow: /
  • Perplexity-User · Disallowed · Disallow: /
  • PerplexityBot · Disallowed · Disallow: /
robots.txt excerpt
User-agent: GPTBot Disallow: / Allow: /branded-story/ Allow: /contributor-content/ Allow: /story/branded-story/ Allow: /story/special/contributor-content/ Allow: /money/money-management/ …

Homepage and robots.txt responses at our latest check

homepage HTTP 402 · not reachable · robots.txt HTTP 200
Homepage
HTTP 402 · not reachable
Challenge page
Not detected
robots.txt
HTTP 200

History and how we checked

24 checks since Sep 28, 2026 · no change

How we got this number

  • What we read: the robots.txt file at eu.usatoday.com/robots.txt
  • Checked: ; tracked since Sep 28, 2026
  • Shown in: Switzerland
  • Checks so far: 24 checks on 21 days since Sep 28, 2026
  • What changed: no change since Sep 28, 2026
  • Page updated:

Changes

  1. — First check: 100%
Record history 24 records for 1 question
Last record
Shown in
Switzerland
TimeValueStatus
Oct 18, 2026100%Observed
Oct 17, 2026100%Observed
Oct 16, 2026100%Observed
Oct 15, 2026100%Observed
Oct 14, 2026100%Observed
Oct 13, 2026100%Observed
Oct 12, 2026100%Observed
Oct 11, 2026100%Observed
Oct 10, 2026100%Observed
Oct 9, 2026100%Observed
Oct 8, 2026100%Observed
Oct 7, 2026100%Observed
Oct 6, 2026100%Observed
Oct 5, 2026100%Observed
Oct 4, 2026100%Observed
Oct 3, 2026100%Observed
Oct 2, 2026100%Observed
Oct 1, 2026100%Observed
Sep 30, 2026100%Observed
Sep 29, 2026100%Observed
Sep 28, 2026100%Observed
Sep 28, 2026100%Observed
Sep 28, 2026100%Observed
Sep 28, 2026100%Observed
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