GEO / AI Visibility

AI crawler access

AI crawler access checks whether important AI and search crawlers are blocked by robots rules, page status, noindex settings, or other access constraints.

AI crawler access checks whether AI retrieval systems and search crawlers can discover and fetch a page. It is a prerequisite for many AI visibility improvements.

The report should distinguish intentional blocking from accidental blocking. A site may choose to restrict some crawlers, but that decision should be explicit.

In the report, use this item as evidence. Do not treat it as a standalone rule unless the surrounding page context supports the same conclusion.

Issue groups in this module

These labels match the expandable groups on the GEO module overview. Append with the issue id from the report URL to jump from a page-level issue to the same section here.

Crawler access data unavailable

This report does not include AI Crawler Access analyzer data for these pages. Re-run the report to populate robots, policy, discovery, and retrieval readiness checks.

Fix robots policy and bot access

Pages where robots/meta directives may block or confuse AI retrieval crawlers. Separate retrieval access from training restrictions.

Expose LLM policy guidance

Publish llms.txt (or equivalent) at the site origin for AI crawler permissions. Fix once on the start page — not per crawled URL.

Improve crawler discovery paths

Pages missing sitemap hints or enough contextual internal links for retrieval crawlers to discover canonical and deep content.

Add canonical URL signals

Pages missing canonical URL hints, making it harder for AI crawlers to resolve duplicate URL variants consistently.

How to interpret it

Important public pages return successful HTTP responses and are not accidentally blocked by robots.txt or noindex.
Crawler policies are documented, reviewed, and aligned with the business strategy for AI visibility.
Bot-specific rules are tested after deployment, not assumed to work.

robots.txt example

User-agent: GPTBot
Allow: /guides/
Disallow: /account/

User-agent: *
Allow: /

Common mistakes

Blocking an entire path in robots.txt without realizing important content lives there.
Using noindex on pages that the business expects search or AI systems to cite.
Allowing crawlers everywhere without reviewing content ownership, licensing, and privacy constraints.

Useful references

Frequently asked questions

Should every AI crawler be allowed?

No. Allowing AI crawlers depends on the site strategy and content licensing position.

Can content rank or be cited if it is blocked?

Blocked content is much less likely to be discovered, refreshed, or cited by systems that rely on crawling.