Publishers / axios.com
Invisible to machines
2 of 14 AI agents get the full page at https://axios.com/. Checked 2026-09-25 09:33 UTC.
axios.com scores 1 out of 100 for machine visibility, number 86 of the 100 content publishers checked on 2026-09-25. Even a plain request carrying a Chrome user agent was refused (HTTP 403), so axios.com serves its pages only to clients that pass a full browser check. Every crawler below got the same treatment, which is why the score is so low. 3 are refused in robots.txt and 9 are refused at the HTTP level. Googlebot, GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot, Claude-User, PerplexityBot, Perplexity-User, Bingbot, Meta-ExternalAgent, Amazonbot, Bytespider, CCBot received a bot-management challenge instead of the page. Googlebot itself is blocked: Bot challenge served (HTTP 403, cf-mitigated=challenge). The raw HTML is an app shell with 3 words; content appears only after JavaScript runs. There is no llms.txt.
youfull pagedegradedblockedunknown
Human
- Status
- 403 → https://www.axios.com/
- Title
- Just a moment...
- H1
- none
- Words
- 3
- Scripts
- 1 tags · 3 KB · app shell
- Meta robots
- noindex,nofollow
- Canonical
- none
- Server
- cloudflare
Machine
- robots.txt
- 10 groups · 1 sitemaps
- llms.txt
- missing
- llms-full.txt
- missing
- X-Robots-Tag
- none
- Blocked
- GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot, Claude-User, PerplexityBot, Perplexity-User, Meta-ExternalAgent, Amazonbot, Bytespider, CCBot
- Degraded
- none
- Challenged
- Googlebot, GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot, Claude-User, PerplexityBot, Perplexity-User, Bingbot, Meta-ExternalAgent, Amazonbot, Bytespider, CCBot
Gaps
- highHumans cannot load this page eitherHTTP 403. Every other check is measured against a broken baseline.
- high12 of 14 AI agents are blockedAssistants asked about this page will guess, or cite someone else. Deliberate for a paywalled publisher. Otherwise this is the biggest gap on the list.
- mediumBot-management challenge served to crawlersGooglebot, GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot, Claude-User, PerplexityBot, Perplexity-User, Bingbot, Meta-ExternalAgent, Amazonbot, Bytespider, CCBot received an interstitial instead of the page. A robots.txt rule is an honest block. A challenge hides the page without saying so.
- lowNo llms.txtOptional, but a short curated index at /llms.txt is the cheapest way to tell assistants what matters on this site.
- highGooglebot is blockedBot challenge served (HTTP 403, cf-mitigated=challenge)
- infoGoogle-Extended not listedYou block other training crawlers but Gemini training via Google-Extended is still allowed. Add it to the same group if the policy is meant to be even-handed.
Every agent
| Agent | Type | robots.txt | Fetch | Words | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Human (Chrome)You | Human | allowed | 403 challenge109 ms | 3 | blocked HTTP 403 |
| GooglebotGoogle · Classic search index. Also feeds AI Overviews. | Search engine | allowed | 403 challenge108 ms | 3 | blocked Bot challenge served (HTTP 403, cf-mitigated=challenge) |
| Google-ExtendedGoogle · Robots-only token controlling Gemini training use. Never fetches on its own. | AI training | allowedAllow: / | n/a | visible Robots-only token; allowed by robots.txt | |
| GPTBotOpenAI · Training crawler for OpenAI models. | AI training | allowed | 403 challenge109 ms | 3 | blocked Bot challenge served (HTTP 403, cf-mitigated=challenge) |
| OAI-SearchBotOpenAI · Indexes for ChatGPT search results and citations. | AI search index | allowed | 403 challenge107 ms | 3 | blocked Bot challenge served (HTTP 403, cf-mitigated=challenge) |
| ChatGPT-UserOpenAI · Live fetch when a user asks ChatGPT about a page. | AI assistant (live fetch) | allowed | 403 challenge107 ms | 3 | blocked Bot challenge served (HTTP 403, cf-mitigated=challenge) |
| ClaudeBotAnthropic · Training crawler for Claude models. | AI training | allowed | 403 challenge107 ms | 3 | blocked Bot challenge served (HTTP 403, cf-mitigated=challenge) |
| Claude-SearchBotAnthropic · Indexes for Claude web search. | AI search index | allowed | 403 challenge108 ms | 3 | blocked Bot challenge served (HTTP 403, cf-mitigated=challenge) |
| Claude-UserAnthropic · Live fetch when a user asks Claude about a page. | AI assistant (live fetch) | allowed | 403 challenge114 ms | 3 | blocked Bot challenge served (HTTP 403, cf-mitigated=challenge) |
| PerplexityBotPerplexity | AI search index | allowed | 403 challenge107 ms | 3 | blocked Bot challenge served (HTTP 403, cf-mitigated=challenge) |
| Perplexity-UserPerplexity | AI assistant (live fetch) | allowed | 403 challenge109 ms | 3 | blocked Bot challenge served (HTTP 403, cf-mitigated=challenge) |
| BingbotMicrosoft · Bing index. Also feeds Copilot and ChatGPT search. | Search engine | allowed | 403 challenge107 ms | 3 | blocked Bot challenge served (HTTP 403, cf-mitigated=challenge) |
| Applebot-ExtendedApple · Robots-only token for Apple Intelligence training. | AI training | allowed | n/a | visible Robots-only token; allowed by robots.txt | |
| Meta-ExternalAgentMeta | AI training | allowed | 403 challenge106 ms | 3 | blocked Bot challenge served (HTTP 403, cf-mitigated=challenge) |
| AmazonbotAmazon · Alexa and Amazon AI. | AI training | disallowedDisallow: / | 403 challenge113 ms | 3 | blocked robots.txt Disallow: / (group: Amazonbot) |
| BytespiderByteDance · Known for ignoring robots.txt. | AI training | disallowedDisallow: / | 403 challenge107 ms | 3 | blocked robots.txt Disallow: / (group: Bytespider) |
| CCBotCommon Crawl · Open dataset used to train most LLMs. | AI training | disallowedDisallow: / | 403 challenge106 ms | 3 | blocked robots.txt Disallow: / (group: CCBot) |
Snapshot
Measured 2026-09-25 09:33 UTC from a residential connection. Sites change their rules often, and sites that verify crawler IPs answer differently to different networks. Run a live comparison to see what axios.com does right now, from Cloudflare's network.