Publishers / thesun.co.uk
Two different webs
4 of 14 AI agents get the full page at https://thesun.co.uk/. Checked 2026-09-25 09:33 UTC.
thesun.co.uk scores 58 out of 100 for machine visibility, number 39 of the 100 content publishers checked on 2026-09-25. 4 of 14 AI agents receive the full page: 2 of 8 training crawlers, 1 of 3 AI search indexes and 1 of 3 assistant fetchers. All 10 refusals are written in robots.txt, which is the transparent way to do it. The pattern is "cite me, don't train on me": 6 of 8 training crawlers are refused while 2 of 6 search and assistant fetchers get through. Bytespider received a bot-management challenge instead of the page. There is no llms.txt.
youfull pagedegradedblockedunknown
Human
- Status
- 200 → https://www.thesun.co.uk/
- Title
- News, sport, celebrities and gossip | The Sun
- H1
- none
- Words
- 2,701
- Scripts
- 54 tags · 199 KB
- Meta robots
- max-image-preview:large
- Canonical
- https://www.thesun.co.uk/
- Server
- nginx
Machine
- robots.txt
- 2 groups · 12 sitemaps
- llms.txt
- missing
- llms-full.txt
- missing
- X-Robots-Tag
- none
- Blocked
- Google-Extended, ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot, Claude-User, PerplexityBot, Perplexity-User, Meta-ExternalAgent, Amazonbot, Bytespider, CCBot
- Degraded
- none
- Challenged
- Bytespider
Gaps
- medium10 of 14 AI agents are blockedGoogle-Extended: robots.txt Disallow: / (group: *) · ClaudeBot: robots.txt Disallow: / (group: *) · Claude-SearchBot: robots.txt Disallow: / (group: *) · Claude-User: robots.txt Disallow: / (group: *) · PerplexityBot: robots.txt Disallow: / (group: *) · Perplexity-User: robots.txt Disallow: / (group: *) · Meta-ExternalAgent: robots.txt Disallow: / (group: *) · Amazonbot: robots.txt Disallow: / (group: *) · Bytespider: robots.txt Disallow: / (group: *) · CCBot: robots.txt Disallow: / (group: *)
- mediumBot-management challenge served to crawlersBytespider 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.
- infoCanonical points elsewhereCanonical is https://www.thesun.co.uk/. Indexes will credit that URL, not this one.
Every agent
| Agent | Type | robots.txt | Fetch | Words | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Human (Chrome)You | Human | disallowedDisallow: / | 200444 ms | 2,701 | visible HTTP 200, 2701 words |
| GooglebotGoogle · Classic search index. Also feeds AI Overviews. | Search engine | allowedAllow: / | 200494 ms | 2,701 | visible HTTP 200, 2701 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: *) | |
| GPTBotOpenAI · Training crawler for OpenAI models. | AI training | allowedAllow: / | 200458 ms | 2,701 | visible HTTP 200, 2701 words |
| OAI-SearchBotOpenAI · Indexes for ChatGPT search results and citations. | AI search index | allowedAllow: / | 200870 ms | 2,701 | visible HTTP 200, 2701 words |
| ChatGPT-UserOpenAI · Live fetch when a user asks ChatGPT about a page. | AI assistant (live fetch) | allowedAllow: / | 200483 ms | 2,701 | visible HTTP 200, 2701 words |
| ClaudeBotAnthropic · Training crawler for Claude models. | AI training | disallowedDisallow: / | 200375 ms | 14 | blocked robots.txt Disallow: / (group: *) |
| Claude-SearchBotAnthropic · Indexes for Claude web search. | AI search index | disallowedDisallow: / | 200519 ms | 2,701 | blocked robots.txt Disallow: / (group: *) |
| Claude-UserAnthropic · Live fetch when a user asks Claude about a page. | AI assistant (live fetch) | disallowedDisallow: / | 200893 ms | 2,701 | blocked robots.txt Disallow: / (group: *) |
| PerplexityBotPerplexity | AI search index | disallowedDisallow: / | 200404 ms | 14 | blocked robots.txt Disallow: / (group: *) |
| Perplexity-UserPerplexity | AI assistant (live fetch) | disallowedDisallow: / | 200391 ms | 14 | blocked robots.txt Disallow: / (group: *) |
| BingbotMicrosoft · Bing index. Also feeds Copilot and ChatGPT search. | Search engine | allowedAllow: / | 200855 ms | 2,701 | visible HTTP 200, 2701 words |
| Applebot-ExtendedApple · Robots-only token for Apple Intelligence training. | AI training | allowedAllow: / | n/a | visible Robots-only token; allowed by robots.txt | |
| Meta-ExternalAgentMeta | AI training | disallowedDisallow: / | 200829 ms | 2,701 | blocked robots.txt Disallow: / (group: *) |
| AmazonbotAmazon · Alexa and Amazon AI. | AI training | disallowedDisallow: / | 200469 ms | 2,701 | blocked robots.txt Disallow: / (group: *) |
| BytespiderByteDance · Known for ignoring robots.txt. | AI training | disallowedDisallow: / | 429 challenge115 ms | 9 | blocked robots.txt Disallow: / (group: *) |
| CCBotCommon Crawl · Open dataset used to train most LLMs. | AI training | disallowedDisallow: / | 2001040 ms | 14 | blocked robots.txt Disallow: / (group: *) |
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 thesun.co.uk does right now, from Cloudflare's network.
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