What is AI Crawler?
An AI crawler is a bot that visits websites to collect content for AI systems — either to train models or to retrieve current information for AI answers. Major examples include GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot (OpenAI), ClaudeBot (Anthropic), PerplexityBot, and Google-Extended. Sites control access through robots.txt directives.
AI Crawler, explained.
The two crawler roles matter differently for GEO: training crawlers shape what models know about you long-term, while retrieval crawlers (like OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot) fetch live pages to cite in real-time answers. Blocking retrieval crawlers means real-time invisibility in those engines.
For a business that wants AI visibility, the standard posture is to explicitly allow the major AI crawlers in robots.txt, keep pages fast and cleanly-structured so crawls succeed, and provide llms.txt as orientation — exactly the configuration this site runs.
- No crawl means no citations — access is the zeroth step of GEO.
- Retrieval crawlers power live answers; blocking them is opting out of AI search.
- robots.txt gives you explicit, per-bot control either way.
Asked and answered.
Should I block AI crawlers to protect my content?
How do I check which AI crawlers visit my site?
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