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Your robots.txt has regulated which search engine crawlers can access your website for years. Beyond Googlebot, there are now AI crawlers and search bots that can technically fetch public content. If you do not know these crawlers, you lose transparency over technical accessibility. This guide shows which AI crawlers exist, how to configure them, and where llms.txt only adds context.
GPTBot is one OpenAI crawler. OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User have different roles and should not be mixed with GPTBot. ClaudeBot belongs to Anthropic, PerplexityBot searches the web for Perplexity AI, and Google-Extended is a Google product token for controlling certain uses of crawled content - separate from normal Googlebot. Each crawler has its own user-agent string and can be handled separately in robots.txt. This affects technical access; citations and mentions remain provider decisions.
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The configuration follows the same pattern as for Googlebot. With "User-agent: GPTBot" and "Allow: /" you allow technical access. With "Disallow: /internal/" you block specific directories. For machine-readable discoverability, avoid accidentally blocking public product, service and information pages, while keeping admin panels and internal documents blocked. Important: robots.txt controls access, not mentions, citations or recommendations.
Beyond robots.txt, llms.txt is an emerging add-on file, not a universally accepted ranking standard. It sits in your website's root directory and provides a compact summary of your business: who you are, what you offer and what your core products or services are. Systems that evaluate llms.txt receive a structured entry point. Beconova generates your llms.txt automatically from your product data and Schema.org information. This is a useful discovery layer, not a ranking or recommendation promise.
robots.txt and llms.txt are technical foundations for AI-readable content. Configuring both correctly improves accessibility and machine-readable orientation. Whether content is cited or mentioned is decided by the respective provider. Beconova helps with automatic llms.txt generation and the integration guide.
Check GEO Score for freeMarvin Malessa
Founder, Beconova
Founded Beconova in Germany in 2025 to help shops and service businesses become visible in AI search engines. Writes about GEO, AI visibility, and the future of search.
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