Agent Accessibility Index

How many of the top 1000 websites tell AI crawlers to stay out?

24.32%

of the top 1000 websites name at least one AI crawler in robots.txt and disallow it, for the week of 2026-10-05.

Denominator: 995 sites with a usable robots.txt verdict for this period. Coverage: 99.50% of the panel. Methodology agents=2;protego=0.6.2, collector 6b510c8+c04c5b8+c50de98.

A known bias in this number

sites behind anti-automation challenges are excluded and are plausibly more AI-hostile than average, so the panel likely under-represents AI-hostile sites.

556 of 1600 candidate sites examined were excluded from the panel before this figure was computed, most often for failing to answer at all.

See every domain in the panel, searchable.

Trend

Targeted and effective access over time, 3 weekly periods from 2026-09-14 to 2026-10-05.Targeted access rose from 23.97% at 2026-09-14 to 24.32% at 2026-10-05. Effective access rose from 26.98% at 2026-09-14 to 27.34% at 2026-10-05.0%10%20%30%2026-09-142026-09-282026-10-0524.32%27.34%

Sub-series for this period

The headline figure counts sites that name at least one AI crawler in robots.txt and disallow it — a targeted block. It does not by itself include sites closed to every crawler by a blanket rule; the effective row below adds those in, so targeted and effective access are not the same number.

The coverage row is not a share of the web; it is the share of the panel this period's headline figure actually rests on. A site counts as conclusively observed if it served a usable robots.txt, or definitively answered that it has none, with a 404. Sites that timed out, refused the request, or sat behind an anti-automation challenge are excluded from both the numerator and the denominator of the headline — counted as neither compliant nor non-compliant.

Fixed series

SeriesValue
Blanket disallow (closed to every crawler)5.83%
Coverage99.50%
Effective (named or blanket)27.34%
Unreadable robots.txt0.20%
change_wow0.20%

Per-agent series

SeriesValue
AI2Bot5.63%
AI2Bot-Dolma4.62%
Amazonbot9.75%
Applebot-Extended10.95%
Brightbot3.42%
Bytespider14.57%
CCBot16.38%
ChatGLM-Spider3.02%
ChatGPT-User11.16%
Claude-SearchBot8.54%
Claude-User8.04%
Claude-Web8.14%
ClaudeBot15.18%
DeepSeekBot4.22%
Devin2.51%
Diffbot9.65%
DuckAssistBot6.73%
GPTBot16.58%
Gemini-Deep-Research3.02%
Google-CloudVertexBot5.13%
Google-Extended14.17%
Google-NotebookLM2.61%
GoogleAgent-Mariner2.21%
ImagesiftBot6.83%
MistralAI-User5.23%
OAI-SearchBot10.05%
PanguBot4.92%
Perplexity-User7.34%
PerplexityBot14.07%
PhindBot2.31%
SBIntuitionsBot2.81%
TavilyBot2.21%
Timpibot7.54%
WrtnBot2.21%
YouBot7.94%
anthropic-ai9.35%
cohere-ai9.75%
cohere-training-data-crawler5.03%
iaskspider2.51%
meta-externalagent11.76%
meta-externalfetcher6.53%
meta-webindexer3.32%
omgili9.45%
omgilibot7.94%
webzio-extended5.73%

Every published print

PeriodTargetedCoverageStatus
2026-10-0524.32%99.50%Final
2026-09-2824.10%99.60%Final
2026-09-1423.97%99.70%Final

Every period as its own permanent, citable page

Restated periods

These periods were published, then revised. Nothing is deleted from the record: the earlier value is kept alongside the reason it changed.

PeriodOld valueNew valueReason
2026-09-1423.47%23.97%methodology v2: agent set expanded from 16 to 45 tokens after an audit found v1 incomplete (Anthropic tracked 1 of 4 live tokens; Meta's fetcher, Cohere's training crawler and Mistral absent)

Downloads

Every figure published on this site can be re-derived from these files. The two ledgers below are served as the exact bytes committed to the repository, not regenerated.

FileRowsSizeDescription
Headline ledger202.6 KBEvery headline figure ever published, for both indices, including superseded vintages and the reason each was restated. Served as the exact bytes committed to the repository.
Series ledger948130.2 KBEvery sub-series: the per-crawler rates, effective and blanket blocking, coverage, the unreadable share and the like-for-like change. Same vintage rules as the headline ledger, same exact bytes.
Panel, 2026-10-05100017.1 KBThe domains measured in this period, with their Tranco rank. This is the denominator of every figure published for the period.
Verdicts, 2026-10-05447752.1 MBOne row per domain per tracked crawler: the stance that domain's robots.txt takes toward that token. The evidence behind every rate published for the period.