Publishers / zdnet.com
48
Invisible to machines
1 of 14 AI agents get the full page at https://zdnet.com/. Checked 2026-09-25 09:33 UTC.
zdnet.com scores 48 out of 100 for machine visibility, number 57 of the 100 content publishers checked on 2026-09-25. 1 of 14 AI agents receive the full page: 1 of 8 training crawlers, 0 of 3 AI search indexes and 0 of 3 assistant fetchers. All 13 refusals are written in robots.txt, which is the transparent way to do it. Bytespider received a bot-management challenge instead of the page. There is no llms.txt.
youfull pagedegradedblockedunknown
Human
- Status
- 200 → https://www.zdnet.com/
- Title
- News and Advice on the World's Latest Innovations | ZDNET - ZDNET
- H1
- none
- Words
- 1,581
- Scripts
- 66 tags · 54 KB
- Meta robots
- follow, index, max-snippet:-1, max-video-preview:-1, max-image-preview:large
- Canonical
- https://www.zdnet.com/
- Server
- nginx
Machine
- robots.txt
- 4 groups · 11 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, Applebot-Extended, Meta-ExternalAgent, Amazonbot, Bytespider, CCBot
- Degraded
- none
- Challenged
- Bytespider
Gaps
- high13 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 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.
- 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.zdnet.com/. Indexes will credit that URL, not this one.
Every agent
| Agent | Type | robots.txt | Fetch | Words | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Human (Chrome)You | Human | allowed | 2002997 ms | 1,581 | visible HTTP 200, 1581 words |
| GooglebotGoogle · Classic search index. Also feeds AI Overviews. | Search engine | allowed | 2002935 ms | 1,581 | visible HTTP 200, 1581 words |
| 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 | disallowedDisallow: / | 2003105 ms | 1,581 | blocked robots.txt Disallow: / (group: GPTBot) |
| OAI-SearchBotOpenAI · Indexes for ChatGPT search results and citations. | AI search index | disallowedDisallow: / | 2003104 ms | 1,581 | blocked robots.txt Disallow: / (group: OAI-SearchBot) |
| ChatGPT-UserOpenAI · Live fetch when a user asks ChatGPT about a page. | AI assistant (live fetch) | disallowedDisallow: / | 403547 ms | 0 | blocked robots.txt Disallow: / (group: ChatGPT-User) |
| ClaudeBotAnthropic · Training crawler for Claude models. | AI training | disallowedDisallow: / | 4031158 ms | 0 | blocked robots.txt Disallow: / (group: ClaudeBot) |
| Claude-SearchBotAnthropic · Indexes for Claude web search. | AI search index | disallowedDisallow: / | 403737 ms | 0 | blocked robots.txt Disallow: / (group: Claude-SearchBot) |
| Claude-UserAnthropic · Live fetch when a user asks Claude about a page. | AI assistant (live fetch) | disallowedDisallow: / | 2002990 ms | 1,581 | blocked robots.txt Disallow: / (group: Claude-User) |
| PerplexityBotPerplexity | AI search index | disallowedDisallow: / | 403955 ms | 0 | blocked robots.txt Disallow: / (group: PerplexityBot) |
| Perplexity-UserPerplexity | AI assistant (live fetch) | disallowedDisallow: / | 2002929 ms | 1,581 | blocked robots.txt Disallow: / (group: Perplexity-User) |
| BingbotMicrosoft · Bing index. Also feeds Copilot and ChatGPT search. | Search engine | allowed | 2003053 ms | 1,581 | visible HTTP 200, 1581 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: / | 2002993 ms | 1,581 | blocked robots.txt Disallow: / (group: Meta-ExternalAgent) |
| AmazonbotAmazon · Alexa and Amazon AI. | AI training | disallowedDisallow: / | 2003052 ms | 1,581 | blocked robots.txt Disallow: / (group: Amazonbot) |
| BytespiderByteDance · Known for ignoring robots.txt. | AI training | disallowedDisallow: / | 429 challenge199 ms | 9 | blocked robots.txt Disallow: / (group: Bytespider) |
| CCBotCommon Crawl · Open dataset used to train most LLMs. | AI training | disallowedDisallow: / | 2003100 ms | 1,581 | 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 zdnet.com does right now, from Cloudflare's network.