Should I allow all AI crawlers?

For most websites the answer is yes. AI crawlers index your content so it can be cited in AI answers, which can bring traffic. The exception is typically sites with paid content behind a wall, where you do not want AI reproducing the content for free. The tool explains the trade-off so you can make the call yourself.

Can AI crawlers harm my website?

Most AI crawlers are gentle and respect crawl-delay directives. If you do see load problems, you can set crawl-delay in robots.txt instead of blocking them entirely — that keeps both the performance and the AI visibility.

What is the difference between GPTBot and GoogleOther?

GPTBot is OpenAI's crawler that fetches content for ChatGPT. GoogleOther is Google's crawler for purposes other than ordinary web search, which Googlebot handles. Both matter for AI visibility, they each have their own user-agent, and they can be allowed or blocked independently.

How quickly do I see an effect after the blockages are removed?

It depends on how often each crawler visits your site, and the tool cannot see that for you — it only reads the rules you paste in. You can help the process along by keeping your sitemap up to date. Either way, expect it to take time before the change shows up in AI answers.

AI & Searchscout

AI Crawler Health

What it does

Reads the robots.txt and page code you paste in and points out rules and setups that shut out AI crawlers from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and others — with an explanation of what each rule does and how to fix it.

AI crawlers are often blocked by technical settings you do not know about — and then your content becomes invisible to AI search

AI models like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini use their own crawlers to index the web. These crawlers have different user-agents than Googlebot and can be blocked by robots.txt rules, WAF settings or server configuration without you noticing. The result is that AI models do not have access to your content and therefore cannot cite or recommend you in their answers — even if you have the best content in your niche.

Hidden blockages — many websites shut out AI crawlers unintentionally through robots.txt rules meant for other purposes, or through overzealous WAF rules
Rendering issues — JavaScript-heavy content built on the client side is often invisible to crawlers that do not run JavaScript, meaning important content is never indexed
Rate limiting — some servers reject AI crawlers because they send many requests in a short time, which is incorrectly read as an attack
No symptoms — a blocked AI crawler produces no error message and no visible change, so the problem can sit there for months

Get your robots.txt and page setup reviewed against all the major AI crawlers — with concrete fixes for each finding

You paste in your robots.txt, and ideally the HTML source from an important page. AI Crawler Health works through the rules against the user-agents of GPTBot, ClaudeBot, GoogleOther, PerplexityBot and others, and tells you which of them are shut out, which line does it, and what to write instead.

Review per crawler: GPTBot (OpenAI), ClaudeBot (Anthropic), GoogleOther (Google AI), PerplexityBot and other relevant AI crawlers
Robots.txt interpretation: reads the file line by line and points out rules that hit AI crawlers — including inherited rules and wildcard patterns that catch them unintentionally
Rendering assessment: paste in the HTML source and see how much of the content exists in the source code and how much is only built by JavaScript
Fix instructions: for each finding you get ready-made lines you can copy — robots.txt updates, server configuration and meta tags

Features

User-agent overview: which AI crawlers exist, who is behind them and what they are used for
Page-specific review: paste in the HTML source for a page and see what is readable without JavaScript — meta tags, structured data and main content
Ready-made robots.txt blocks you can copy straight in, with an explanation of what each line does
Competitor comparison: paste in a competitor's robots.txt and see whether they let in crawlers you shut out

How it works

Paste in your robots.txt — and ideally the HTML source from an important page
Get status per AI crawler — open, partially blocked or blocked — with the specific rule causing it
Fix the rules, paste in the updated file and run the review again to confirm it is correct

Use cases

Web developers — check that technical changes do not unintentionally shut out AI crawlers
SEO teams — ensure AI crawlers reach the content optimized for AI visibility — otherwise the work is wasted
IT departments — understand which AI crawlers should be allowed and how the server should be set up to balance security against AI visibility

Why use AI Crawler Health?

You cannot be cited by something that is not allowed to read you. It does not matter how well your content is optimized for AI visibility if the crawlers are stopped at the door. AI Crawler Health reads your rules and points out the technical barriers standing between your content and what AI models know.

Technical changes happen all the time. A server update, a new plugin or a change in the CDN setup can introduce rules that shut out AI crawlers. Make the review a routine after such changes — pasting in the robots.txt takes a few minutes, and it is the cheapest way to catch the mistake.

AI crawlers are not Googlebot. Many people assume that if Googlebot gets in, everyone gets in. But AI crawlers have their own user-agents and can be blocked separately, often by a rule meant for something else entirely. AI Crawler Health reads the rules with exactly those user-agents in mind, so the difference does not slip past you.

FAQ

Should I allow all AI crawlers?: For most websites the answer is yes. AI crawlers index your content so it can be cited in AI answers, which can bring traffic. The exception is typically sites with paid content behind a wall, where you do not want AI reproducing the content for free. The tool explains the trade-off so you can make the call yourself.
Can AI crawlers harm my website?: Most AI crawlers are gentle and respect crawl-delay directives. If you do see load problems, you can set crawl-delay in robots.txt instead of blocking them entirely — that keeps both the performance and the AI visibility.
What is the difference between GPTBot and GoogleOther?: GPTBot is OpenAI's crawler that fetches content for ChatGPT. GoogleOther is Google's crawler for purposes other than ordinary web search, which Googlebot handles. Both matter for AI visibility, they each have their own user-agent, and they can be allowed or blocked independently.
How quickly do I see an effect after the blockages are removed?: It depends on how often each crawler visits your site, and the tool cannot see that for you — it only reads the rules you paste in. You can help the process along by keeping your sitemap up to date. Either way, expect it to take time before the change shows up in AI answers.

Try AI Crawler Health free