Publishers / espn.com
64
Two different webs
5 of 14 AI agents get the full page at https://espn.com/. Checked 2026-09-25 09:33 UTC.
espn.com scores 64 out of 100 for machine visibility, number 29 of the 100 content publishers checked on 2026-09-25. 5 of 14 AI agents receive the full page: 1 of 8 training crawlers, 2 of 3 AI search indexes and 2 of 3 assistant fetchers. All 5 refusals are written in robots.txt, which is the transparent way to do it. The pattern is "cite me, don't train on me": 4 of 8 training crawlers are refused while 4 of 6 search and assistant fetchers get through. There is no llms.txt.
youfull pagedegradedblockedunknown
Human
- Status
- 200 → https://www.espn.com/
- Title
- ESPN - Serving Sports Fans. Anytime. Anywhere.
- H1
- none
- Words
- 866
- Scripts
- 30 tags · 101 KB
- Meta robots
- none
- Canonical
- https://www.espn.com
- Server
- hidden
Machine
- robots.txt
- 11 groups · 1 sitemaps
- llms.txt
- missing
- llms-full.txt
- missing
- X-Robots-Tag
- none
- Blocked
- Google-Extended, GPTBot, ChatGPT-User, Bytespider, CCBot
- Degraded
- OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, Meta-ExternalAgent, Amazonbot
- Challenged
- none
Gaps
- medium5 of 14 AI agents are blockedGoogle-Extended: robots.txt Disallow: / (group: Google-Extended) · GPTBot: robots.txt Disallow: / (group: GPTBot) · ChatGPT-User: robots.txt Disallow: / (group: ChatGPT-User) · Bytespider: robots.txt Disallow: / (group: Bytespider) · CCBot: robots.txt Disallow: / (group: CCBot)
- infoTraining blocked, citation allowedTraining crawlers are refused while search and assistant fetches get through. This is the common "cite me, don't train on me" posture.
- medium5 agents get a degraded pageOAI-SearchBot: Different content than humans receive · ClaudeBot: Different content than humans receive · Bingbot: Only 0 words vs 866 for humans · Meta-ExternalAgent: Different content than humans receive · Amazonbot: Different content than humans receive
- lowNo llms.txtOptional, but a short curated index at /llms.txt is the cheapest way to tell assistants what matters on this site.
- infoCanonical points elsewhereCanonical is https://www.espn.com/. Indexes will credit that URL, not this one.
Every agent
| Agent | Type | robots.txt | Fetch | Words | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Human (Chrome)You | Human | allowed | 200668 ms | 866 | visible HTTP 200, 866 words |
| GooglebotGoogle · Classic search index. Also feeds AI Overviews. | Search engine | allowed | 200480 ms | 866 | visible HTTP 200, 866 words |
| Google-ExtendedGoogle · Robots-only token controlling Gemini training use. Never fetches on its own. | AI training | disallowedDisallow: / | n/a | blocked robots.txt Disallow: / (group: Google-Extended) | |
| GPTBotOpenAI · Training crawler for OpenAI models. | AI training | disallowedDisallow: / | 200972 ms | 866 | blocked robots.txt Disallow: / (group: GPTBot) |
| OAI-SearchBotOpenAI · Indexes for ChatGPT search results and citations. | AI search index | allowed | 200965 ms | 866 | partial Different content than humans receive |
| ChatGPT-UserOpenAI · Live fetch when a user asks ChatGPT about a page. | AI assistant (live fetch) | disallowedDisallow: / | 200701 ms | 866 | blocked robots.txt Disallow: / (group: ChatGPT-User) |
| ClaudeBotAnthropic · Training crawler for Claude models. | AI training | allowed | 200976 ms | 866 | partial Different content than humans receive |
| Claude-SearchBotAnthropic · Indexes for Claude web search. | AI search index | allowed | 200754 ms | 866 | visible HTTP 200, 866 words |
| Claude-UserAnthropic · Live fetch when a user asks Claude about a page. | AI assistant (live fetch) | allowed | 200679 ms | 866 | visible HTTP 200, 866 words |
| PerplexityBotPerplexity | AI search index | allowed | 200745 ms | 866 | visible HTTP 200, 866 words |
| Perplexity-UserPerplexity | AI assistant (live fetch) | allowed | 200826 ms | 866 | visible HTTP 200, 866 words |
| BingbotMicrosoft · Bing index. Also feeds Copilot and ChatGPT search. | Search engine | allowed | 20296 ms | 0 | partial Only 0 words vs 866 for humans |
| 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 | 200963 ms | 866 | partial Different content than humans receive |
| AmazonbotAmazon · Alexa and Amazon AI. | AI training | allowed | 200475 ms | 866 | partial Different content than humans receive |
| BytespiderByteDance · Known for ignoring robots.txt. | AI training | disallowedDisallow: / | 40395 ms | 82 | blocked robots.txt Disallow: / (group: Bytespider) |
| CCBotCommon Crawl · Open dataset used to train most LLMs. | AI training | disallowedDisallow: / | 2001062 ms | 866 | 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 espn.com does right now, from Cloudflare's network.