Discussion AI Crawlability Tools

What tools actually check if AI bots can crawl our site? Just discovered we might be blocking them

DE
DevOps_Sarah · DevOps Engineer
· · 65 upvotes · 8 comments
DS
DevOps_Sarah
DevOps Engineer · January 7, 2026

Marketing team is freaking out because we have zero AI visibility. They asked me to check if AI bots can even crawl us.

My problem:

  • I know how to check Googlebot access (robots.txt, GSC)
  • I have no idea how to check GPTBot, ClaudeBot, etc.
  • Our marketing team says competitors appear in AI but we don’t
  • Need to diagnose if this is a crawlability problem

Questions:

  1. What tools check AI-specific crawlability?
  2. How do I manually test AI crawler access?
  3. What are all the places AI bots could be blocked?
  4. Once I identify the problem, how do I fix it?

Looking for practical tools and commands, not theory.

8 comments

8 Comments

CE
Crawlability_Expert Expert Technical SEO Engineer · January 7, 2026

Here’s your complete AI crawlability diagnostic toolkit:

Free tools for quick checks:

  1. Rankability AI Search Indexability Checker

    • Tests from multiple global regions
    • Checks all major AI crawlers
    • Generates AI Visibility Score
    • Reviews robots.txt automatically

  2. LLMrefs AI Crawlability Checker

    • Simulates GPTBot user agent
    • Shows exactly what AI sees
    • Identifies JS rendering issues
    • Framework-specific recommendations

  3. MRS Digital AI Crawler Access Checker

    • Quick robots.txt analysis
    • Shows which AI bots allowed/blocked
    • Simple pass/fail results

Manual command-line tests:

# Test GPTBot (ChatGPT)
curl -A "GPTBot/1.0" -I https://yoursite.com

# Test PerplexityBot
curl -A "PerplexityBot" -I https://yoursite.com

# Test ClaudeBot
curl -A "ClaudeBot/1.0" -I https://yoursite.com

# Test Google-Extended (Gemini)
curl -A "Google-Extended" -I https://yoursite.com

What to look for:

  • 200 OK = Access allowed
  • 403 Forbidden = Blocked
  • 503 = Rate limited or challenge
  • HTML content = Good
  • Challenge page = CDN blocking
DS
DevOps_Sarah OP · January 7, 2026
Replying to Crawlability_Expert
Just ran curl tests. GPTBot gets 403, PerplexityBot gets 200. So we’re selectively blocking? Where would that be configured?
CE
Crawlability_Expert Expert · January 7, 2026
Replying to DevOps_Sarah

Selective blocking means you have user-agent specific rules somewhere. Check these in order:

1. Robots.txt (most common)

# Look for lines like:
User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /

# Or:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /

2. Cloudflare (very common - blocks AI by default now)

  • Dashboard > Security > Bots > AI Bots
  • Check if “AI Scrapers and Crawlers” is blocked

3. Web server config

# Apache .htaccess
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} GPTBot [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]

# Nginx
if ($http_user_agent ~* "GPTBot") {
    return 403;
}

4. WAF rules

  • Check your WAF (Cloudflare, AWS WAF, etc.)
  • Look for bot-blocking rules

5. Application-level blocking

  • Check middleware for user-agent filtering
  • Check security plugins (WordPress has some)

Quick fix for robots.txt:

User-agent: GPTBot
Allow: /

User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /

User-agent: ClaudeBot
Allow: /

Add this before any Disallow: / rules.

ED
Enterprise_DevOps Enterprise DevOps Lead · January 7, 2026

Enterprise perspective - multiple blocking layers:

Our infrastructure audit checklist:

We use this when diagnosing AI crawler blocks:

LayerWhere to CheckCommon Issue
DNSDNS provider settingsGeo-blocking
CDNCloudflare/Fastly/AkamaiBot protection defaults
Load BalancerAWS ALB/ELB rulesRate limiting
WAFSecurity rulesBot signatures
Web Servernginx/Apache configUser-agent blocks
ApplicationMiddleware/pluginsSecurity modules
Robots.txt/robots.txt fileExplicit disallow

The sneaky one: Cloudflare

In July 2025, Cloudflare started blocking AI crawlers by default. Many sites are blocked without knowing.

To fix in Cloudflare:

  1. Security > Bots > Configure Bot Management
  2. Find “AI Scrapers and Crawlers” section
  3. Change from “Block” to “Allow”
  4. Optionally allow specific bots only

Verification after fixing:

Wait 15-30 minutes for changes to propagate, then re-run curl tests.

CP
ContinuousMonitoring_Pro · January 6, 2026

Once you fix access, you need ongoing monitoring:

Enterprise-grade tools:

  1. Conductor Monitoring

    • 24/7 AI crawler activity tracking
    • Real-time alerts when blocks occur
    • Historical crawl frequency data
    • Identifies which pages AI visits most

  2. Am I Cited

    • Tracks citations across AI platforms
    • Shows correlation between crawl access and citations
    • Competitive benchmarking

What to monitor:

MetricWhy It Matters
Crawl frequencyAre AI bots visiting regularly?
Pages crawledWhich content gets attention?
Success rateAre some pages blocked?
Crawl depthHow much of site is explored?
Time to citationHow long after crawl until cited?

Alerting setup:

Configure alerts for:

  • Crawler access blocked
  • Crawl frequency drops
  • New pages not being crawled
  • Citation rate changes

The pattern we see:

Crawlability issues often come back because:

  • Security team enables new rules
  • CDN updates default settings
  • WordPress plugin update
  • Infrastructure change

Continuous monitoring catches these before they impact visibility.

SL
SecurityTeam_Lead · January 6, 2026

Security perspective - why you might be blocking AI:

Legitimate reasons to block:

  1. Training data concerns - Don’t want content in AI training
  2. Copyright protection - Prevent content reproduction
  3. Competitive intelligence - Block competitors’ AI research
  4. Resource protection - AI crawlers can be aggressive

If you decide to allow AI crawlers:

Consider selective access:

# Allow AI crawlers on marketing content
User-agent: GPTBot
Allow: /blog/
Allow: /products/
Allow: /features/
Disallow: /internal/
Disallow: /admin/

# Block from training-sensitive content
User-agent: CCBot
Disallow: /

Middle ground approach:

  • Allow live-search AI (GPTBot, PerplexityBot) for visibility
  • Block training-focused crawlers (CCBot) to protect content
  • Use meta robots tags for page-level control

The business discussion:

This shouldn’t be a DevOps decision alone. Include:

  • Marketing (wants visibility)
  • Legal (content rights concerns)
  • Security (protection priorities)
  • Leadership (strategic direction)

Then implement the agreed policy.

DS
DevOps_Sarah OP DevOps Engineer · January 6, 2026

Found the issue - Cloudflare was blocking GPTBot by default. Here’s what I did:

Diagnosis steps that worked:

  1. curl tests - Quick identification that GPTBot was blocked
  2. Cloudflare dashboard - Found AI Bots set to “Block”
  3. robots.txt check - Clean, wasn’t the issue

The fix:

Cloudflare > Security > Bots > AI Scrapers and Crawlers > Allow

Verification:

# Before fix
curl -A "GPTBot/1.0" -I https://oursite.com
# Result: 403 Forbidden

# After fix (30 minutes later)
curl -A "GPTBot/1.0" -I https://oursite.com
# Result: 200 OK

Tools I’ll use going forward:

  1. Quick checks: curl with AI user-agents
  2. Comprehensive audit: Rankability checker
  3. Ongoing monitoring: Am I Cited + log analysis

Process improvement:

Creating a quarterly AI crawlability audit checklist:

  • Test all AI crawler user-agents with curl
  • Review Cloudflare/CDN bot settings
  • Check robots.txt for AI directives
  • Verify WAF rules
  • Audit server config
  • Check application-level blocks

Communication:

Sent summary to marketing team. They’re now waiting to see if citations improve over the next few weeks.

Thanks everyone for the practical guidance!

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Frequently Asked Questions

What tools check AI crawlability?
Key tools: Rankability AI Search Indexability Checker (comprehensive analysis), LLMrefs AI Crawlability Checker (GPTBot simulation), Conductor Monitoring (24/7 tracking), MRS Digital AI Crawler Access Checker (robots.txt analysis). Also use curl with AI user-agents for quick manual tests.
How do I test if GPTBot can access my site?
Quick test: run ‘curl -A GPTBot/1.0 https://yoursite.com ’ in terminal. If you get a 200 OK with content, GPTBot can access. If you get 403, blocked page, or challenge, you’re blocking AI. Check robots.txt and CDN settings (especially Cloudflare).
What AI crawlers should I allow?
Key AI crawlers to allow: GPTBot (ChatGPT), PerplexityBot (Perplexity), ClaudeBot (Claude), Google-Extended (Gemini), CCBot (Common Crawl, used for training). Consider your business goals - some sites intentionally block AI training while allowing search.
Is robots.txt the only thing blocking AI crawlers?
No. AI crawlers can be blocked by: robots.txt directives, CDN settings (Cloudflare blocks by default), WAF rules, hosting provider defaults, geo-blocking, rate limiting, and bot detection systems. Check all these if crawlability tests fail.

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