robots.txt report

lifewire.com

https://www.lifewire.com/

All reports for lifewire.comPage not read: bot challenge
A

94/100

Complexity 84/100

How scoring works
User Agents
82
Rules
99
Sitemaps
2
Pass
0
File Size
3.5 KB
Cached result · Expires in 2 days 12 hours

No problems found

4 checks passed · 4 policy notes

82 crawlers named · 12 unrecognised

What this file says about crawlers

Not checked

Who this file lets in

  • AI Data Scraper1 allowed, 17 blocked
  • AI Search Crawler1 allowed, 12 blocked
  • Unrecognised all 11 blocked
  • Uncategorized1 allowed, 8 blocked
  • AI Assistant1 allowed, 8 blocked
  • Undocumented AI Agent all 5 blocked
  • Search Engine Crawler all 4 blocked
  • Intelligence Gatherer1 allowed, 3 blocked

Path Access Checker

Detailed Analysis

Info

1 of 6 search engines are blocked

Blocked: Baiduspider.

  • BaiduspiderBaiduL114

    Baidu

    "Disallow: /" blocks Baiduspider.

If that is the intention. If your intention is to keep the site out of the major search indexes, the current configuration achieves that for these crawlers — the rest of the group is still allowed.

Consequence. These search engines cannot crawl the site, so its pages will not appear in their results. Note that robots.txt does not remove URLs that are already indexed — it stops them being re-crawled.

If that is not intended. Remove the matching Disallow rule, or give these crawlers their own group with an Allow rule. Path matching is longest-wins, so a specific Allow overrides a broader Disallow.

Info

3 of 4 AI answer engines are blocked

Blocked: PerplexityBot, Claude-SearchBot, Google-Extended.

  • PerplexityBotPerplexityL40

    Perplexity answers

    "Disallow: /" blocks PerplexityBot.

  • Claude-SearchBotAnthropicL40

    Claude search results

    "Disallow: /" blocks Claude-SearchBot.

  • Google-ExtendedGoogleL40

    Google AI Overviews and Gemini grounding

    "Disallow: /" blocks Google-Extended.

If that is the intention. If your intention is to keep the site out of AI-generated answers, the current configuration achieves that for these crawlers — the rest of the group is still allowed.

Consequence. The site cannot be cited as a source in AI-generated answers. Unlike training crawlers these send referral traffic, so blocking them forfeits those visits.

If that is not intended. Remove the matching Disallow rule, or allow these agents on the sections you want cited.

Info

2 of 3 user-triggered AI fetches are blocked

Blocked: Perplexity-User, Claude-User.

  • Perplexity-UserPerplexityL114

    A Perplexity user opening this page

    "Disallow: /" blocks Perplexity-User.

  • Claude-UserAnthropicL114

    A Claude user opening this page

    "Disallow: /" blocks Claude-User.

If that is the intention. If your intention is to prevent assistants from fetching pages when a person asks for them, the current configuration achieves that for these crawlers — the rest of the group is still allowed.

Consequence. When someone asks an assistant to open a page on this site, it cannot be retrieved. These requests are made because a person asked for that specific page, not to collect content in bulk.

If that is not intended. Allow these agents globally, or only on the sections you want retrievable.

Info

5 of 6 AI training crawlers are blocked

Blocked: ClaudeBot, Bytespider, meta-externalagent, CCBot, Amazonbot.

  • ClaudeBotAnthropicL114

    Anthropic model training

    "Disallow: /" blocks ClaudeBot.

  • BytespiderByteDanceL114

    ByteDance model training

    "Disallow: /" blocks Bytespider.

  • meta-externalagentMetaL40

    Meta model training

    "Disallow: /" blocks meta-externalagent.

  • CCBotCommon CrawlL40

    Common Crawl, widely redistributed as training data

    "Disallow: /" blocks CCBot.

  • AmazonbotAmazonL114

    Amazon model training and Alexa

    "Disallow: /" blocks Amazonbot.

If that is the intention. If your intention is to prevent this content being used as model training data, the current configuration achieves that for these crawlers — the rest of the group is still allowed.

Consequence. These crawlers cannot retrieve content from the site, so it will not be collected as training data. They send no traffic back, and blocking them does not affect search rankings.

If that is not intended. Remove the site-wide block, or replace it with narrower path restrictions.

Pass

Social link previews can reach the site

All 5 checked social link previews are allowed at the site root.

Not checked

Page directives were not checked

The page answered HTTP 403 with a bot challenge instead of its content, so its meta robots tags and X-Robots-Tag headers were not read.

Consequence. Nothing is known about whether this page asks to be kept out of search results. Its absence of directives here proves nothing either way.

If that is not intended. Analyse the page again once it answers normally to our bot.

Pass

2 sitemaps declared

Every declared sitemap is an absolute URL and is crawlable.

  • https://www.lifewire.com/sitemap.xmlL116
  • https://www.lifewire.com/google-news-sitemap.xmlL117
Pass

No syntax problems

Every line parses as a directive crawlers understand.

Pass

File size is 3.5 KB

Comfortably within the 500 KB that crawlers will read.