AI search isn’t the future. It’s already here. ChatGPT, Google’s AI Overviews, and Perplexity are reshaping how people find local services and research businesses. And right now, a growing number of website owners are accidentally cutting themselves off from that new visibility by blocking AI crawlers in the name of “protecting their content.” So let’s unpack what’s really happening, what those options mean, and how to find a smarter balance between content control and marketing reach.
Blocking AI Crawlers: What Actually Happens
AI crawlers are bots that read and index your website, much like Googlebot does for search. The most common ones include:
- GPTBot, OpenAI (ChatGPT)
- Google-Extended, powers Google’s AI Overviews
- PerplexityBot, used by Perplexity.ai
You can block any of these through your robots.txt file, but before you rush to do it, understand what you’re trading.
Pros of Blocking AI Crawlers
Protects your intellectual property (IP) Your content won’t be directly used to train language models. That can help safeguard sensitive material, especially if you publish proprietary insights or industry data.
Reduces unapproved reuse Your words and ideas are less likely to appear in AI-generated outputs elsewhere.
Cons of Blocking AI Crawlers
You lose visibility in AI-driven search If AI tools can’t crawl your site, they can’t summarise or cite you. That means no mentions in AI answers and fewer referral links from platforms like Perplexity or ChatGPT.
You might disappear from Google’s AI Overviews Blocking Google-Extended can stop your content being featured in AI-generated summaries, even if your regular rankings stay the same. You’ll still appear in organic results, but AI answers increasingly dominate the first screen of search.
You’ll miss emerging discovery channels Generative search is where many users are now finding services. If your site’s invisible to AI crawlers, your competitors could claim that space while you wait for traffic that never comes back.
The Grey Zone: Training vs Retrieval
Blocking AI bots isn’t airtight.
Let’s say you block GPTBot. ChatGPT won’t crawl your site directly. But if your content is shared publicly on platforms like Medium or Reddit, which don’t block AI crawlers, your work could still appear in AI summaries through those channels.
So even if you block AI bots, your content might still be used indirectly. That’s why the discussion shouldn’t just be about protection, it’s about intentional exposure.
Platform-Specific Effects
Google AI Overviews
- Uses data from Google Search and Google-Extended.
- If you block Google-Extended, your site may not appear in AI summaries.
- You’ll still show up in standard results, but those are appearing further down the fold.
ChatGPT and Perplexity
- Run their own crawlers (GPTBot and PerplexityBot).
- If you block them, your content won’t appear in answers, but indirect references (from other sites) may still surface.
So, it’s less about can they crawl you, and more about where you want to be visible.
Rule of Thumb: Choose Based on Your Goal
| Your Priority | Recommended Action |
|---|---|
| Brand visibility, leads, and authority | Allow AI crawlers for public-facing content |
| Intellectual property protection or gated content | Block AI crawlers for private areas |
If you rely on visibility and SEO to drive leads, blocking AI crawlers is like hiding your best content behind a curtain.
Google has been “training” on your site for decades, just under a different name.
1. Google has always crawled, categorised, and reused your data
When Googlebot visits your site, it doesn’t just “index” it. It analyses structure, entities, relationships, and content patterns to:
- Rank your content.
- Create snippets and “People Also Ask” answers.
- Generate featured snippets, which are essentially summaries of your content displayed without a click.
That’s already machine learning. Google has been training algorithms on your website for years, they just called it ranking optimisation instead of model training.
2. The only new layer is purpose and persistence
The difference with AI crawlers (GPTBot, PerplexityBot, etc.) isn’t that they crawl, it’s what they do after crawling. So the philosophical line isn’t “Is my content being read by machines?”, it’s “Do I still get credit and visibility when it’s reused?”
- Google’s crawlers build a dynamic index that changes daily.
- AI crawlers build or refine persistent models that generate answers directly, sometimes without attribution or a link back.
““And I get it, for creators or publishers, protecting your content makes sense. But for business websites? There’s no real reason to hide your marketing material from AI search. The entire point of that content is to be discovered.” – Vanessa
3. The irony: Blocking AI bots can make you invisible to your own customers
By blocking GPTBot or Google-Extended, you’re cutting yourself out of:
- AI Overviews (which sit above organic search)
- Generative answers on Perplexity, ChatGPT, Bing Copilot, etc.
- The new ecosystem of “zero-click” search visibility
In short, yes, Google’s been doing this forever. The only difference now is scale, transparency, and loss of attribution. That’s what triggers the current debate.
A Smarter Hybrid Strategy
The smartest brands are using selective access.
Allow AI crawlers for:
- Blog posts
- Articles
- Local landing pages
- Case studies
Restrict AI crawlers for:
- Premium resources
- Client deliverables
- Gated assets or paid training content
That way, you maintain marketing reach while protecting sensitive information.
Example hybrid setup in robots.txt:
User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /client-area/
Disallow: /training/
Allow: /You can also use meta tags for page-by-page control:
<meta name="robots" content="noai, noimageai">AI discovery is already driving measurable traffic in 2025
Google’s AI Overviews and Search Generative Experience (SGE) summaries are reshaping how users find answers, often without ever scrolling.
If your brand isn’t being cited in those spaces, your competitors probably are. And unlike traditional SEO, there’s no “catch-up” once authority signals are baked into AI models.
Build AI-Ready SEO, Not Defensive SEO
AI isn’t going away. Blocking it isn’t a strategy, it’s a speed bump. Instead, focus on AI-optimised visibility:
- Structured data (schema) to help AI understand your content.
- Author markup and proof mechanisms (E-E-A-T) to increase trust.
- Case studies and topical authority that get cited naturally.
We help clients balance protection and exposure through AI-Ready SEO setups, from robots.txt management to content strategies that get you AI visibility without compromising IP.
Want to protect your content and grow your visibility?
Let’s make your site AI-smart, visible where it counts and protected where it matters. Book a free strategy call or contact our support team to set up your AI crawler permissions the smart way.
