AI crawlers are automated bots that fetch web pages for AI providers in order to find content, make it available for search functions, retrieve it for answers, or, depending on the provider, use it for model training.Open glossary entry → are bots that automatically visit and read web pages. They are controlled via the robots.txt file, and reputable crawlers usually respect its directives.
Three use cases matter for control:
- training bots fetch content to improve future models,
- search and retrieval bots make content available for AI search and source retrieval,
- user-triggered bots fetch a page when a user enters a specific URL or query.
Blocking all AI crawlers indiscriminately protects content from certain uses but can cost AI Visibility describes whether and how visible a brand, website or person is in AI-generated answers. It measures mention, position, description and source linking across multiple platforms and prompts.Open glossary entry →. A differentiated strategy is usually better: deliberately allow or block training, and keep live retrieval and AI search accessible where possible.
Blocks arise not only via The robots.txt is a publicly accessible text file in a site's root directory. It tells crawlers which URLs they may fetch and therefore controls crawling.Open glossary entry → but also via firewalls, a A content delivery network (CDN) is a network of distributed servers that delivers static content closer to the user, reducing loading times.Open glossary entry → or bot management. robots.txt is not a security mechanism; real protection requires login, server or WAF rules.