Crawlability Checker
Assess accessibility for search engines and AI crawlers.
What is the Crawlability Checker?
Your robots.txt file controls which search engines and AI crawlers can access your site. A misconfigured robots.txt can accidentally block Google from indexing your pages — or let AI bots scrape your content without permission. This tool reads robots.txt and shows exactly what's allowed and blocked.
How to Use
- Enter a domain to fetch and parse its robots.txt file
- See which crawlers are allowed, blocked, or have custom rules
- Check specific AI bot access (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, etc.)
- Review sitemap references declared in robots.txt
Why This Matters for SEO
A single robots.txt mistake can deindex your entire site. We've seen sites accidentally block Googlebot with a wildcard rule, losing all organic traffic overnight. Conversely, allowing all AI crawlers means your content may be used to train models without compensation.
Tips & Best Practices
- Never block Googlebot or Bingbot unless you intentionally want to deindex pages
- Use specific disallow rules instead of wildcards to avoid accidental blocks
- Block crawl-heavy paths like /search, /filter, or paginated archives
- Decide your AI crawler policy — block GPTBot/ClaudeBot if you want to protect content
- Test changes with Google Search Console's robots.txt tester before deploying
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is robots.txt?
- Robots.txt is a text file at your domain root that tells search engine crawlers which pages they can and cannot access. Crawlers check it before scanning your site.
- Should I block AI crawlers?
- It depends on your content strategy. Blocking GPTBot, ClaudeBot, and similar AI crawlers prevents your content from being used for AI training. Blocking them doesn't affect your Google rankings.