AI bots and site access
Why blocking bots can cut you out of AI answers - and which bots really matter.
On this page
Two kinds of bots
AI bots fall into two groups, and confusing them costs visibility:
- 1Citing botsThey come to the site when a user asks a question. Blocking them means you genuinely drop out of the answer.
- 2Training botsThey collect content to train models. Blocking them does NOT take citations away - that is a separate decision, mostly a matter of principle.
Where blocks come from
Most often from the robots.txt file or from hosting protections that nobody switched on deliberately. The panel shows exactly what is blocking access and what to change.