AI crawler study · Government
Which Government sites block AI crawlers?
2 of 32 Government sites block at least one AI crawler (6.3%). Checked October 2026, 43 sites.
Blocked most often
| Crawler | Kind | Sites blocking it |
|---|---|---|
| CCBot Common Crawl | Training | 2 of 32 |
| GPTBot OpenAI | Training | 1 of 32 |
| OAI-SearchBot OpenAI | Search | 1 of 32 |
| ChatGPT-User OpenAI | User fetcher | 1 of 32 |
| ClaudeBot Anthropic | Training | 1 of 32 |
| Claude-SearchBot Anthropic | Search | 1 of 32 |
| Claude-User Anthropic | User fetcher | 1 of 32 |
| PerplexityBot Perplexity | Search | 1 of 32 |
| Perplexity-User Perplexity | User fetcher | 1 of 32 |
| Google-Extended | AI-use control | 1 of 32 |
| Meta-ExternalAgent Meta | Training | 1 of 32 |
| Amazonbot Amazon | General | 1 of 32 |
| Bytespider ByteDance | Training | 1 of 32 |
| Applebot-Extended Apple | AI-use control | 0 of 32 |
Every site
| Site | Blocks | Which |
|---|---|---|
| congress.gov | 13 of 14 | GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot, Claude-User, PerplexityBot, Perplexity-User, Google-Extended, CCBot, Meta-ExternalAgent, Amazonbot, Bytespider |
| who.int | 1 of 14 | CCBot |
| cdc.gov | 0 of 14 | none |
| census.gov | 0 of 14 | none |
| epa.gov | 0 of 14 | none |
| europa.eu | 0 of 14 | none |
| fca.org.uk | 0 of 14 | none |
| fda.gov | 0 of 14 | none |
| ftc.gov | 0 of 14 | none |
| gov.scot | 0 of 14 | none |
| gov.uk | 0 of 14 | none |
| gov.wales | 0 of 14 | none |
| house.gov | 0 of 14 | none |
| ico.org.uk | 0 of 14 | none |
| irs.gov | 0 of 14 | none |
| justice.gov | 0 of 14 | none |
| legislation.gov.uk | 0 of 14 | none |
| metoffice.gov.uk | 0 of 14 | none |
| nasa.gov | 0 of 14 | none |
| nationalarchives.gov.uk | 0 of 14 | none |
| nhs.uk | 0 of 14 | none |
| nice.org.uk | 0 of 14 | none |
| nidirect.gov.uk | 0 of 14 | none |
| nih.gov | 0 of 14 | none |
| ons.gov.uk | 0 of 14 | none |
| royal.uk | 0 of 14 | none |
| sec.gov | 0 of 14 | none |
| un.org | 0 of 14 | none |
| usa.gov | 0 of 14 | none |
| usps.com | 0 of 14 | none |
| weather.gov | 0 of 14 | none |
| whitehouse.gov | 0 of 14 | none |
Left out, because their robots.txt could not be read (bot protection, errors or no answer): bankofengland.co.uk, loc.gov, noaa.gov, ofcom.org.uk, parliament.uk, police.uk, senate.gov, ssa.gov, state.gov, tfl.gov.uk, usgs.gov.
From each site's robots.txt rules for the homepage, read as the robots.txt standard (RFC 9309) says. robots.txt is a request, not a lock: this shows what sites ask, not what AI companies do. Sites whose robots.txt we could not read are left out. The list of sites was picked by Kavel and is not a sample of the web. Part of Kavel's AI crawler study, built with AI.
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