How to block AI crawlers
on Squarespace
Squarespace does not let you edit robots.txt directly, but it has a setting for AI crawlers. Where it is, what it covers and what to check afterwards.
Squarespace does it with a setting
Squarespace manages your robots.txt itself. Instead of a text editor, it offers a setting to ask AI models to exclude your site. Squarespace's help article for this is called "Request that AI models exclude your site". I could not read that article from here (it needs a sign-in), so the steps below come from guides that describe it, and you should compare them with Squarespace's own page.
The steps
- Open your site's Settings panel.
- Find Crawlers (use the search box at the top of the settings panel if you cannot see it).
- Look for the option about artificial intelligence crawlers, and turn it on to ask the crawlers Squarespace knows about to stay away.
- Save.
The same panel has a separate setting for search engines. Leave that alone unless you want your site out of search results altogether.
Check what it did
Open yoursite.com/robots.txt and look for groups naming crawlers such as GPTBot. Then run the AI crawler checker, which lists each crawler we know of and whether your robots.txt asks it to stay out. Squarespace decides which names are covered, so the list can differ from the one you would write yourself, and it may change over time.
If you want finer control
If you want to block some crawlers and allow others (for example block training crawlers but allow search crawlers), a setting that is all or nothing may not fit. Squarespace's help pages describe what options exist; some sites use a separate service in front of their site to control crawlers. See our guide to Cloudflare and AI bot blocking, which covers one such service.
What this does not do
- robots.txt is a request that well-behaved crawlers follow. It does not technically stop anything, and it does not remove content already collected.
- It does not control assistants fetching a page on a person's behalf.
Not sure whether to block at all? Read allowing or blocking AI crawlers in robots.txt.
Written with AI from the platforms' own help pages (read 26 October 2026) and checked against them. Menus and options change: if yours differ, follow the platform's current help page. This is general information, not advice.