AI crawler access · congress.gov
Does congress.gov block GPTBot and other AI crawlers?
GPTBot: blockedAs of 2026-10-02, the robots.txt of congress.gov blocks 19 of 29 AI crawlers on the home page: GPTBot is blocked, ClaudeBot is blocked and PerplexityBot is blocked.
- Policy: Blocks some AI search (At least one AI search or assistant crawler blocked)
- AI search access: 35% of the AI search and assistant crawlers we track may fetch the home page (these decide whether AI answers can cite the site).
- robots.txt: found at
https://congress.gov/robots.txt - llms.txt: no
- Content-Signal: none
- Category: Government · domain: .gov · popularity band: Tranco 1001-3000
- Last checked: (daily)
All 29 AI crawlers on congress.gov
Status for the home page (/) under congress.gov's robots.txt. Partially blocked = home page allowed, some paths disallowed.
| Crawler | Operator | robots.txt |
|---|---|---|
| Training crawlers | ||
| GPTBot | OpenAI | blocked |
| ClaudeBot | Anthropic | blocked |
| Google-Extended | blocked | |
| Applebot-Extended | Apple | allowed |
| Meta-ExternalAgent | Meta | blocked |
| Amazonbot | Amazon | blocked |
| MistralAI-Training | Mistral | allowed |
| CCBot | Common Crawl | blocked |
| Bytespider | ByteDance | blocked |
| cohere-ai | Cohere | blocked |
| AI search crawlers | ||
| OAI-SearchBot | OpenAI | blocked |
| Claude-SearchBot | Anthropic | blocked |
| PerplexityBot | Perplexity | blocked |
| Google-CloudVertexBot | blocked | |
| Applebot | Apple | allowed |
| meta-webindexer | Meta | blocked |
| Amzn-SearchBot | Amazon | allowed |
| DuckAssistBot | DuckDuckGo | blocked |
| MistralAI-Index | Mistral | allowed |
| User-triggered fetch crawlers | ||
| ChatGPT-User | OpenAI | blocked |
| Claude-User | Anthropic | blocked |
| Perplexity-User | Perplexity | blocked |
| Google-GeminiNotebook | allowed | |
| Google-Agent | allowed | |
| meta-externalfetcher | Meta | blocked |
| Amzn-User | Amazon | allowed |
| MistralAI-User | Mistral | blocked |
| Ads review crawlers | ||
| OAI-AdsBot | OpenAI | allowed |
| meta-externalads | Meta | allowed |
Compared with other government sites in the index: 3.8% of them block GPTBot and 3.8% block ClaudeBot (n=210). Across all 8,366 readable sites: 12% block GPTBot. All government sites →
On .gov domains: 4.6% of 108 readable sites block GPTBot and 1.9% serve an llms.txt. All .gov sites →
History
No change recorded since daily tracking started on 2026-10-02. We re-check congress.gov every day; a change in its AI crawler rules shows up here and on the index page.
FAQ
- Does congress.gov block GPTBot?
- Yes. As of 2026-10-02, https://congress.gov/robots.txt disallows the home page for GPTBot, OpenAI's AI training crawler.
- Does congress.gov block ClaudeBot?
- Yes. As of 2026-10-02, https://congress.gov/robots.txt disallows the home page for ClaudeBot, Anthropic's AI training crawler.
- Does congress.gov block PerplexityBot?
- Yes. As of 2026-10-02, https://congress.gov/robots.txt disallows the home page for PerplexityBot, Perplexity's AI search crawler.
- Can ChatGPT search (OAI-SearchBot) crawl congress.gov?
- Yes. As of 2026-10-02, https://congress.gov/robots.txt disallows the home page for OAI-SearchBot, OpenAI's AI search crawler.
- Does congress.gov block Google-Extended (Gemini training)?
- Yes. As of 2026-10-02, https://congress.gov/robots.txt disallows the home page for Google-Extended, Google's AI training crawler.
- Does congress.gov have an llms.txt file?
- No. As of 2026-10-02, congress.gov does not serve a plain-text /llms.txt file.
- How can I check congress.gov or my own site again?
- Use the free AI crawler checker at tools.yukai.uk/free/ai-crawler-checker (no sign-up). To check many sites and get alerts when rules change, use the AI Crawler Access Checker on Apify.
Similar government sites
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Other government sites block GPTBot · Which .gov sites block GPTBot