Does ondemand.com block AI crawlers?
turned OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot and PerplexityBot away at the firewall even though robots.txt allowed them. Its robots.txt blocked 3 of 7 AI training crawlers. We tested it on 13 October 2026 as part of our study of the top 5,000 websites, where ondemand.com ranked #3,363.
Can AI search engines cite it?
ChatGPT search · OAI-SearchBot
Blocked by the firewall
Robots.txt allows it, but the server answered our request as this crawler with a bot challenge page while a browser got the page.
Claude · Claude-SearchBot
Blocked by the firewall
Robots.txt allows it, but the server answered our request as this crawler with a bot challenge page while a browser got the page.
Perplexity · PerplexityBot
Blocked by the firewall
Robots.txt allows it, but the server answered our request as this crawler with a bot challenge page while a browser got the page.
Firewall results come from requests that identified as each crawler from our own connection, not from the crawlers' IP addresses, so the real crawler may be treated differently.
This is a snapshot from 13 October 2026.
Run a live audit to see what AI crawlers get from ondemand.com today, plus 50 more checks.
At a glance
- AI training crawlers blocked
- 3 of 7 (Applebot-Extended, MistralAI-Training, Bytespider)
- robots.txt
- Published, with rules
- CDN
- Akamai
- Content-Signal
- None
- Home page to a browser
- HTTP 200
All 31 crawlers in ondemand.com's robots.txt
| Crawler | Job | ondemand.com | Sites blocking it |
|---|---|---|---|
| OAI-SearchBot | AI search index | Allowed (named rule) | 7.5% |
| Claude-SearchBot | AI search index | Allowed (named rule) | 7.1% |
| PerplexityBot | AI search index | Allowed (named rule) | 10% |
| MistralAI-Index | AI search index | Blocked (rule for all crawlers) | 4.1% |
| YouBot | AI search index | Blocked (rule for all crawlers) | 10% |
| ChatGPT-User | Fetches when a user asks | Allowed (named rule) | 9.5% |
| Claude-User | Fetches when a user asks | Allowed (named rule) | 7.5% |
| Perplexity-User | Fetches when a user asks | Allowed (named rule) | 7.6% |
| Google-GeminiNotebook | Fetches when a user asks | Blocked (rule for all crawlers) | 3.9% |
| Meta-ExternalFetcher | Fetches when a user asks | Blocked (rule for all crawlers) | 7.9% |
| Amzn-User | Fetches when a user asks | Blocked (rule for all crawlers) | 4.8% |
| DuckAssistBot | Fetches when a user asks | Blocked (rule for all crawlers) | 7.9% |
| MistralAI-User | Fetches when a user asks | Allowed (named rule) | 7.1% |
| Googlebot | Search engine | Allowed (named rule) | 2.1% |
| Bingbot | Search engine | Allowed (named rule) | 2.3% |
| Meta-WebIndexer | Search engine | Blocked (rule for all crawlers) | 6.3% |
| Amzn-SearchBot | Search engine | Blocked (rule for all crawlers) | 5.1% |
| Applebot | Search and training under one name | Allowed (named rule) | 3.5% |
| Meta-ExternalAgent | Search and training under one name | Blocked (rule for all crawlers) | 12% |
| Amazonbot | Search and training under one name | Allowed (named rule) | 9.8% |
| GPTBot | Model training | Allowed (named rule) | 14% |
| ClaudeBot | Model training | Allowed (named rule) | 13% |
| Google-Extended | Model training | Allowed (named rule) | 12% |
| Applebot-Extended | Model training | Blocked (rule for all crawlers) | 11% |
| MistralAI-Training | Model training | Blocked (rule for all crawlers) | 4.2% |
| Bytespider | Model training | Blocked (rule for all crawlers) | 15% |
| CCBot | Model training | Allowed (named rule) | 15% |
| Google-Agent | Browses and acts for a user | Blocked (rule for all crawlers) | 4.2% |
| OAI-AdsBot | Ads checks and site-owner services | Blocked (rule for all crawlers) | 4.0% |
| Google-CloudVertexBot | Ads checks and site-owner services | Blocked (rule for all crawlers) | 6.9% |
| Meta-ExternalAds | Ads checks and site-owner services | Blocked (rule for all crawlers) | 3.9% |
“Sites blocking it” is the share of the 2,332 live sites with readable robots.txt rules in the same study. Matching follows RFC 9309: a crawler obeys the group that names it, otherwise the rule for all crawlers.
Run ondemand.com?
Blocking training crawlers doesn't remove you from AI answers; blocking the search crawlers does. To keep AI search and opt out of training, use the AI robots.txt generator, then check your CDN with a live audit. Every crawler's user agent is in the AI crawler list, and the full method and data are in the study.
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