B Evidence Grade B Graded accuracy verified by the review judge Safe to Cite Current

9.9%

9.9% -- share of sites blocking gptbot in robots txt for GPTBot (OpenAI) (Q3 2026)

Q3 2026  · n=1,744  · AI Visibility

In Q3 2026, 9.9% of successfully crawled websites blocked OpenAI's GPTBot in their robots.txt file.

  • Only reflects robots.txt blocking, not firewall, CDN, or bot-protection rules
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Attribution: AI Visibility View source
Lighthouse Research Team
Last verified:  ·  How we verify data →
Source verified Evidence graded
Value
9.9%
Unit
Percentage
Data Vintage
Q3 2026
Entity
GPTBot (OpenAI)
Sample Size
1,744
Geography
GB
B
Strong, reliable evidence

Sourced from a well-regarded research firm or industry leader with transparent methodology and a reasonably large sample.

61/100 confidence

Single source - not yet corroborated

Extraction
95
Source Trust
60
Citation Chain
20
Independence
30
Methodology
45
Freshness
95
AI Visibility Primary Tier A
https://www.ai-visibility.org.uk/blog/is-your-website-blocking-ai/ ↗
Confidence: 57/100 Vintage: Q3 2026 Channel: Deep Crawl
Source Article
Is Your Website Blocking AI Crawlers? How to Check | AI Visibility
Why your website might be invisible to AI crawlers Your website might be invisible to AI, and you'd never know it. When someone asks ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini about your industry, your competitors show up. You don't. Not because your content is weak or your site is new, but because something techni…
Original Research
AI Visibility · Original study ↗

Quarterly ADF adoption crawler reading robots.txt of ~2,000 sites; 1,744 successfully read; crawl completed 1 July 2026

Methodology documented
IndustryAI & Machine Learning RegionGB Channelcontent
Plain Text
GPTBot (OpenAI): 9.9% share of sites blocking gptbot in robots txt. Source: AI Visibility (Q3 2026). Via Lighthouse Intelligence -- https://lighthousedata.io/data/gptbot-blocked-robots-txt-q3-2026
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<blockquote cite="https://lighthousedata.io/data/gptbot-blocked-robots-txt-q3-2026" style="border-left:3px solid #2563eb;padding:12px 16px;margin:16px 0;font-family:system-ui,sans-serif;background:#f0f4ff;"><strong>9.9%</strong> -- share of sites blocking gptbot in robots txt for GPTBot (OpenAI)<br><small>Source: AI Visibility (Q3 2026) · <a href="https://lighthousedata.io/data/gptbot-blocked-robots-txt-q3-2026" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lighthouse Intelligence</a></small></blockquote>
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