Publishers / theguardian.com · also in Top 100
54
Two different webs
2 of 14 AI agents get the full page at https://theguardian.com/. Checked 2026-09-25 09:32 UTC.
theguardian.com scores 54 out of 100 for machine visibility, number 45 of the 100 content publishers checked on 2026-09-25. 2 of 14 AI agents receive the full page: 1 of 8 training crawlers, 0 of 3 AI search indexes and 1 of 3 assistant fetchers. 9 are refused in robots.txt and 1 is refused at the HTTP level. The pattern is "cite me, don't train on me": 6 of 8 training crawlers are refused while 1 of 6 search and assistant fetchers get through. Googlebot itself is partial: Different content than humans receive. There is no llms.txt.
youfull pagedegradedblockedunknown
Human
- Status
- 200 → https://www.theguardian.com/au
- Title
- Latest news, sport and opinion from the Guardian
- H1
- none
- Words
- 3,851
- Scripts
- 19 tags · 22 KB
- Meta robots
- max-image-preview:large
- Canonical
- https://www.theguardian.com
- Server
- hidden
Machine
- robots.txt
- 3 groups · 2 sitemaps
- llms.txt
- missing
- llms-full.txt
- missing
- X-Robots-Tag
- bingbot: noarchive
- Blocked
- ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot, Claude-User, PerplexityBot, Perplexity-User, Applebot-Extended, Meta-ExternalAgent, Amazonbot, Bytespider, CCBot
- Degraded
- GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot
- Challenged
- none
Gaps
- medium10 of 14 AI agents are blockedClaudeBot: robots.txt Disallow: / (group: ClaudeBot) · Claude-SearchBot: robots.txt Disallow: / (group: Claude-SearchBot) · Claude-User: robots.txt Disallow: / (group: Claude-User) · PerplexityBot: robots.txt Disallow: / (group: PerplexityBot) · Perplexity-User: HTTP 403 for this user agent · Applebot-Extended: robots.txt Disallow: / (group: Applebot-Extended) · Meta-ExternalAgent: robots.txt Disallow: / (group: Meta-ExternalAgent) · Amazonbot: robots.txt Disallow: / (group: Amazonbot) · Bytespider: robots.txt Disallow: / (group: Bytespider) · CCBot: robots.txt Disallow: / (group: CCBot)
- medium3 agents get a degraded pageGooglebot: Different content than humans receive · GPTBot: Different content than humans receive · OAI-SearchBot: 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.
- 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.
- infoCanonical points elsewhereCanonical is https://www.theguardian.com/. Indexes will credit that URL, not this one.
Every agent
| Agent | Type | robots.txt | Fetch | Words | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Human (Chrome)You | Human | allowed | 200982 ms | 3,851 | visible HTTP 200, 3851 words |
| GooglebotGoogle · Classic search index. Also feeds AI Overviews. | Search engine | allowed | 2001014 ms | 3,854 | partial Different content than humans receive |
| Google-ExtendedGoogle · Robots-only token controlling Gemini training use. Never fetches on its own. | AI training | allowed | n/a | visible Robots-only token; allowed by robots.txt | |
| GPTBotOpenAI · Training crawler for OpenAI models. | AI training | allowed | 200981 ms | 3,854 | partial Different content than humans receive |
| OAI-SearchBotOpenAI · Indexes for ChatGPT search results and citations. | AI search index | allowed | 2001010 ms | 3,854 | partial Different content than humans receive |
| ChatGPT-UserOpenAI · Live fetch when a user asks ChatGPT about a page. | AI assistant (live fetch) | allowed | 2001035 ms | 3,851 | visible HTTP 200, 3851 words |
| ClaudeBotAnthropic · Training crawler for Claude models. | AI training | disallowedDisallow: / | 403538 ms | 69 | blocked robots.txt Disallow: / (group: ClaudeBot) |
| Claude-SearchBotAnthropic · Indexes for Claude web search. | AI search index | disallowedDisallow: / | 403538 ms | 69 | blocked robots.txt Disallow: / (group: Claude-SearchBot) |
| Claude-UserAnthropic · Live fetch when a user asks Claude about a page. | AI assistant (live fetch) | disallowedDisallow: / | 403536 ms | 69 | blocked robots.txt Disallow: / (group: Claude-User) |
| PerplexityBotPerplexity | AI search index | disallowedDisallow: / | 403536 ms | 69 | blocked robots.txt Disallow: / (group: PerplexityBot) |
| Perplexity-UserPerplexity | AI assistant (live fetch) | allowed | 403537 ms | 69 | blocked HTTP 403 for this user agent |
| BingbotMicrosoft · Bing index. Also feeds Copilot and ChatGPT search. | Search engine | allowed | 2001010 ms | 3,851 | visible HTTP 200, 3851 words |
| Applebot-ExtendedApple · Robots-only token for Apple Intelligence training. | AI training | disallowedDisallow: / | n/a | blocked robots.txt Disallow: / (group: Applebot-Extended) | |
| Meta-ExternalAgentMeta | AI training | disallowedDisallow: / | 403536 ms | 69 | blocked robots.txt Disallow: / (group: Meta-ExternalAgent) |
| AmazonbotAmazon · Alexa and Amazon AI. | AI training | disallowedDisallow: / | 403536 ms | 69 | blocked robots.txt Disallow: / (group: Amazonbot) |
| BytespiderByteDance · Known for ignoring robots.txt. | AI training | disallowedDisallow: / | 403535 ms | 69 | blocked robots.txt Disallow: / (group: Bytespider) |
| CCBotCommon Crawl · Open dataset used to train most LLMs. | AI training | disallowedDisallow: / | 403534 ms | 69 | blocked robots.txt Disallow: / (group: CCBot) |
Snapshot
Measured 2026-09-25 09:32 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 theguardian.com does right now, from Cloudflare's network.