How to Set Up Your robots.txt for AI Search Engines

What is robots.txt and Why It Matters for AI

Robots.txt is a plain text file that lives at the root of your website — at yoursite.com/robots.txt. Its job is simple: it tells web crawlers which parts of your site they are allowed to access and which parts are off-limits. It has been a foundational piece of the web since 1994, when it was introduced as the Robots Exclusion Protocol.

For decades, the primary audience for robots.txt was traditional search engine crawlers like Googlebot and Bingbot. You would use it to prevent search engines from indexing admin pages, duplicate content, or staging environments. It was a technical SEO concern that most site owners configured once and forgot about.

That has changed. In 2026, your robots.txt file has a much larger audience. AI crawlers — the bots that power ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and dozens of other AI systems — now read your robots.txt to determine whether they can access your content. And unlike traditional search, where being indexed is table stakes, AI crawlers are the gateway to an entirely new discovery channel.

Here is why this matters for your business: if your robots.txt blocks AI crawlers, those AI systems cannot read your content. If they cannot read your content, they cannot cite you when users ask questions. And with Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) becoming a critical part of content strategy, blocking AI crawlers is equivalent to telling a growing share of your potential audience that you do not exist.

The problem is that many websites are blocking AI crawlers without realizing it. Some hosting platforms add blanket disallow rules. Some site owners copy-paste robots.txt templates from outdated guides. Others intentionally block all bots and do not realize that AI crawlers are caught in the crossfire. The result is the same: invisible content in a channel that drives an increasing amount of traffic and brand visibility.

The Key AI Crawlers You Need to Know

Before you can configure your robots.txt for AI, you need to know which bots to target. Each AI company uses its own crawler with a unique User-agent string. Here are the ones that matter most in 2026:

Important distinction: some of these crawlers serve dual purposes. GPTBot, for example, is used both for real-time search results and for training data collection. Google-Extended is separate from Googlebot — blocking Google-Extended does not affect your Google search rankings, only whether Google uses your content for Gemini and AI Overviews training.

OpenAI also introduced OAI-SearchBot specifically for ChatGPT's live search feature. If you block GPTBot but allow OAI-SearchBot, your content can still appear in ChatGPT's real-time search results but will not be used for training. This gives site owners granular control over how their content is used.

Understanding these distinctions matters because your robots.txt strategy should be intentional. You might want to allow search-related crawlers while blocking training-only crawlers, or you might want to open the door to all of them. The key is making an informed decision rather than leaving it to chance.

How to Check Your Current robots.txt

Before making changes, you need to know what you are working with. Here is how to audit your current robots.txt configuration:

Step 1: View Your robots.txt File

Open your browser and navigate to yoursite.com/robots.txt. This will display the raw text of your file. If you see a 404 error, you do not have a robots.txt file — which means all crawlers (including AI bots) have full access by default. This is actually better than having a misconfigured file that accidentally blocks them.

Step 2: Look for AI-Specific Rules

Scan the file for any mention of AI crawler User-agents: GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, Bytespider, or CCBot. If you see Disallow: / next to any of these, that crawler is being blocked from your entire site.

Step 3: Check for Blanket Rules

Look for a User-agent: * section. This is the catch-all rule that applies to any crawler not specifically named elsewhere in the file. If this section contains Disallow: /, it blocks every crawler that does not have its own explicit allow rule — including all AI bots you have not specifically addressed.

Step 4: Use an Automated Analyzer

Manual review works, but it is easy to miss nuances — especially with complex robots.txt files that have multiple rules, wildcard patterns, or inherited directives. The fastest way to get a comprehensive picture is to use an automated tool.

How to Write an AI-Friendly robots.txt

Now that you know what you are working with, here is how to write a robots.txt that welcomes AI crawlers while still protecting the parts of your site that should remain private.

The Basic Syntax

Robots.txt uses a simple syntax. Each block starts with a User-agent: line specifying which crawler the rules apply to, followed by Allow: and Disallow: directives. Lines starting with # are comments.

# Example: Allow a specific bot full access
User-agent: GPTBot
Allow: /

# Example: Block a specific bot entirely
User-agent: Bytespider
Disallow: /

# Example: Allow access but block certain paths
User-agent: ClaudeBot
Allow: /
Disallow: /admin/
Disallow: /private/

Strategy 1: Allow All AI Crawlers (Recommended for Most Sites)

If your goal is maximum AI visibility — and for most businesses, it should be — the simplest approach is to explicitly allow every major AI crawler. This ensures that even if your catch-all rule is restrictive, AI bots can still access your content.

# AI Crawlers - Allow full access
User-agent: GPTBot
Allow: /

User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /

User-agent: ClaudeBot
Allow: /

User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /

User-agent: Google-Extended
Allow: /

User-agent: CCBot
Allow: /

Strategy 2: Allow Search, Block Training

Some site owners want their content to appear in AI search results but do not want it used for model training. While the line between search and training is blurry, you can make a reasonable distinction by allowing search-focused bots and blocking training-focused ones.

# Allow AI search bots
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /

User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /

# Block training-only crawlers
User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: CCBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: Bytespider
Disallow: /

Strategy 3: Selective Access

You can also allow AI crawlers to access your public content while blocking sensitive or proprietary sections. This is useful if you have a mix of public marketing content and gated resources.

# Allow AI crawlers to access public content
User-agent: GPTBot
Allow: /blog/
Allow: /about/
Allow: /products/
Disallow: /members/
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /admin/

User-agent: ClaudeBot
Allow: /blog/
Allow: /about/
Allow: /products/
Disallow: /members/
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /admin/

Whichever strategy you choose, the critical thing is that it is intentional. Do not leave your AI crawler access to chance. Make a deliberate decision based on your business goals, document it, and review it periodically.

Common Mistakes That Block AI Crawlers

In our analysis of thousands of websites using the Robots.txt AI Analyzer, we see the same mistakes repeatedly. Here are the most common ones and how to fix them.

Mistake 1: The Blanket Block

This is by far the most common issue. Many robots.txt files contain this rule:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

This blocks every crawler from accessing any part of your site. It is sometimes left over from a staging environment, or it was added intentionally to block traditional search engines without realizing it would also block AI crawlers. If you have this rule, every AI bot that visits your site is turned away at the door.

Fix: Either remove the blanket disallow and replace it with specific rules for bots you actually want to block, or add explicit Allow rules for AI crawlers above the catch-all block. Specific User-agent rules take precedence over the wildcard.

Mistake 2: Blocking GPTBot But Not Realizing the Impact

After OpenAI announced GPTBot, many publishers added a block out of caution or on principle. While this is a valid choice, many site owners did not realize the downstream impact: their content would not appear in ChatGPT search results, which now handles hundreds of millions of queries per week. If your competitors allow GPTBot and you do not, ChatGPT will cite them instead of you.

Fix: Reassess whether blocking GPTBot still aligns with your business goals. If you want to allow ChatGPT search but not training, consider allowing OAI-SearchBot while keeping GPTBot blocked.

Mistake 3: Forgetting About New Crawlers

The AI landscape evolves rapidly. New crawlers appear regularly, and if your robots.txt only has rules for Googlebot, new AI crawlers will fall back to your User-agent: * rule. If that rule is permissive, no problem. If it is restrictive, every new AI crawler is blocked by default.

Fix: Review your robots.txt quarterly. Check for new AI crawlers that have emerged and add explicit rules for them. Better yet, make your User-agent: * rule permissive and only block specific crawlers you have decided to exclude.

Mistake 4: Using Noindex Instead of Disallow

Some site owners confuse Disallow in robots.txt with the noindex meta tag. These are different things. Disallow prevents crawlers from accessing the page at all. Noindex tells search engines not to include the page in their index but still allows crawling. For AI crawlers, the robots.txt Disallow is what matters — if they cannot crawl the page, they cannot use its content.

Mistake 5: Not Having a robots.txt at All (and Thinking That Is Fine)

While having no robots.txt does mean all crawlers have access by default, it also means you have no control. You cannot selectively block specific bots, protect private directories, or signal anything about your site's structure. A well-configured robots.txt that explicitly allows AI crawlers is better than no file at all because it demonstrates intentionality and gives you a mechanism for control when you need it.

Recommended robots.txt Template

Here is our recommended robots.txt template for businesses that want maximum AI visibility while maintaining control over private content. Copy it, customize the blocked paths for your site, and deploy it.

# ============================================
# robots.txt — AI-Friendly Configuration
# Generated with guidance from Vida Together
# https://www.vidatogether.com/blog/robots-txt-ai-guide
# ============================================

# ----- Traditional Search Engines -----
User-agent: Googlebot
Allow: /

User-agent: Bingbot
Allow: /

# ----- AI Search & Training Crawlers -----

# OpenAI (ChatGPT search + training)
User-agent: GPTBot
Allow: /

# OpenAI (ChatGPT real-time search only)
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /

# Anthropic (Claude)
User-agent: ClaudeBot
Allow: /

# Perplexity AI
User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /

# Google AI (Gemini, AI Overviews training)
User-agent: Google-Extended
Allow: /

# Common Crawl (open AI training data)
User-agent: CCBot
Allow: /

# ----- Blocked Crawlers -----

# ByteDance (optional — block if not needed)
User-agent: Bytespider
Disallow: /

# ----- Default Rule -----
# Allow everything not explicitly blocked
User-agent: *
Allow: /

# Block private/admin paths for all crawlers
User-agent: *
Disallow: /admin/
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /_next/
Disallow: /tmp/

# ----- Sitemap -----
Sitemap: https://yoursite.com/sitemap.xml

Customize this template by replacing yoursite.com with your actual domain, adjusting the blocked paths to match your site structure, and deciding whether to allow or block Bytespider and CCBot based on your preferences around training data.

After deploying your updated robots.txt, run it through the Robots.txt AI Analyzer to verify that all the crawlers you intend to allow actually have access, and that your blocked paths are working correctly.

Beyond robots.txt: The Full AI Visibility Stack

Robots.txt is the foundation — it determines whether AI crawlers can access your content at all. But it is only the first layer of a complete AI visibility strategy. Once the door is open, you need to make sure what AI crawlers find is structured, clear, and optimized for how AI models process information.

Schema Markup

Schema markup gives AI crawlers structured, machine-readable data about your content. It tells them explicitly what your page is about, who wrote it, when it was published, and how it relates to other entities. If robots.txt is the front door, schema markup is the clearly labeled filing system inside.

llms.txt

The llms.txt file is an emerging standard that provides AI models with a plain-language summary of your website. It sits alongside robots.txt at your site root and gives AI a quick overview of who you are, what you do, and what content matters most. Think of it as a cover letter for AI crawlers.

Content Structure

How you structure your content matters enormously for AI citation. Clear headings, question-and-answer formatting, definitive statements, and well-organized information hierarchies all make it easier for AI models to extract and cite your content. Our complete guide to Answer Engine Optimization covers the content strategy side in depth.

Comprehensive AEO Audit

The best way to understand how all these pieces fit together for your specific site is to run a full AEO audit. It analyzes your robots.txt, schema markup, content structure, entity clarity, and more — giving you a single score and a prioritized list of improvements.

Frequently Asked Questions

The Bottom Line

Your robots.txt file is one of the simplest yet most consequential files on your website. A few lines of text determine whether AI search engines can discover, process, and recommend your content — or whether you are completely invisible to the fastest-growing discovery channel on the internet.

The fix is straightforward. Check your current robots.txt. Identify whether AI crawlers are blocked. Make an intentional decision about which crawlers to allow. Deploy an updated file. Verify it works. The whole process takes less than fifteen minutes, and the impact on your AI visibility can be immediate.

But remember: robots.txt is just the first layer. True AI visibility requires a comprehensive approach — from schema markup and llms.txt to content structure and entity clarity. The businesses that build this full stack will dominate AI search results. The ones that do not will wonder why their traffic is declining even as their Google rankings hold steady.

Start with robots.txt today. Then build from there. And if you want to see exactly where you stand across every dimension of AI visibility, run a free AEO audit — it takes 60 seconds and gives you a prioritized action plan.