AI crawlers · Google
Is your site blocking Googlebot?
Googlebot is the crawler behind Google Search, including AI Overviews. Check your site now: we read your robots.txt exactly as Googlebot must, ask your server as each AI crawler, and look at your product pages.
Does blocking it hurt?
AI search and answers Blocking Googlebot keeps your shop out of Google Search, including AI Overviews: your pages can't be read there, so they can't be shown or recommended.
In our research, <1% of 2,159 online shops block Googlebot in robots.txt. See the research.
Allow or block it in robots.txt
Google says Googlebot follows robots.txt, so the lines below decide whether it reads your shop.
To let it in (add to your robots.txt, at yourshop.com/robots.txt):
User-agent: Googlebot Allow: /
To keep it out:
User-agent: Googlebot Disallow: /
A more specific group wins: if your robots.txt also has a group for Googlebot, that group decides, not the “User-agent: *” rules. Our check reads it the same way (RFC 9309).
Other places it gets blocked
- Cloudflare. Cloudflare has blocked AI crawlers by default on new sites since July 2025, and it can also write your robots.txt for you. If your site uses Cloudflare, check its AI crawler settings first (MIT Technology Review).
- Security plugins and firewalls. WordPress security plugins and host firewalls sometimes refuse crawlers they don’t recognise, even when robots.txt allows them. Our check asks your server as each crawler and shows any refusal.
Where this comes from
Google’s own documentation: developers.google.com. Google's common crawlers page: Googlebot crawls for Google Search; AI Overviews draw on the Search index.
Google’s other crawlers
- Google-Extended (Model training)
We check 18 AI crawlers in one go. See them all · How the check works