Should I block AI crawlers in robots.txt?

Question 1

Accepted Answer

For most brands, no. Blocking GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, and Google-Extended removes you from the retrieval pool that AI systems draw from. Publishers with a licensing strategy may choose to block; brands optimizing for visibility should allow AI crawlers explicitly.

Question 2

Should I block AI crawlers in robots.txt — can you explain?

Accepted Answer

For most brands, no. Blocking GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, and Google-Extended removes you from the retrieval pool that AI systems draw from. Publishers with a licensing strategy may choose to block; brands optimizing for visibility should allow AI crawlers explicitly.

Question 3

In simple terms, should I block AI crawlers in robots.txt?

Accepted Answer

For most brands, no. Blocking GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, and Google-Extended removes you from the retrieval pool that AI systems draw from. Publishers with a licensing strategy may choose to block; brands optimizing for visibility should allow AI crawlers explicitly.

Should I block AI crawlers in robots.txt?

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