Does theatlantic.com block AI crawlers?

As of 2026-11-03, the robots.txt of theatlantic.com blocks 12 of 18 AI crawlers, including ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot, Claude-User, PerplexityBot.

12/18AI crawlers blocked

YesChatGPT can read it

NoPerplexity can read it

NoClaude can read it

NoHas an llms.txt file

AI crawler status of theatlantic.com

Based on the live robots.txt of theatlantic.com, checked on 2026-11-03. “Some paths restricted” means the bot may crawl the site but certain sections are excluded.

User agent	Company	Purpose	Status
`GPTBot`	OpenAI	Model training	Allowed (some paths restricted)
`OAI-SearchBot`	OpenAI	ChatGPT search index	Allowed (some paths restricted)
`ChatGPT-User`	OpenAI	Live browsing for ChatGPT users	Allowed (some paths restricted)
`ClaudeBot`	Anthropic	Model training	Blocked
`Claude-SearchBot`	Anthropic	Claude search index	Blocked
`Claude-User`	Anthropic	Live browsing for Claude users	Blocked
`PerplexityBot`	Perplexity	Perplexity search index	Blocked
`Perplexity-User`	Perplexity	Live browsing for Perplexity users	Blocked
`Google-Extended`	Google	Gemini training & grounding	Blocked
`Googlebot`	Google	Search and AI Overviews	Allowed (some paths restricted)
`Bingbot`	Microsoft	Bing search and Microsoft Copilot	Allowed (some paths restricted)
`Applebot-Extended`	Apple	Apple Intelligence training	Blocked
`Meta-ExternalAgent`	Meta	Meta AI training	Blocked
`Amazonbot`	Amazon	Alexa and Amazon AI	Blocked
`DuckAssistBot`	DuckDuckGo	DuckAssist answers	Allowed (some paths restricted)
`MistralAI-User`	Mistral	Live browsing for Le Chat users	Blocked
`CCBot`	Common Crawl	Open dataset used by many AI models	Blocked
`Bytespider`	ByteDance	Model training	Blocked

What this means

theatlantic.com blocks some AI crawlers but not others, so its visibility differs by assistant. Check the table to see exactly which AI products can read it.

Among the 381 news & media sites in our AI crawler report, 59% block GPTBot completely. theatlantic.com is not one of them.

Blocking AI bots is one side. The other: is AI actually sending you visitors? Citelytic shows how much traffic ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot send to your own site.

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FAQ

Does theatlantic.com block ChatGPT?

No. As of 2026-11-03, OAI-SearchBot is allowed with some restricted paths and ChatGPT-User is allowed with some restricted paths in the robots.txt of theatlantic.com. GPTBot (OpenAI's training crawler) is allowed with some restricted paths.

Can Perplexity access theatlantic.com?

PerplexityBot is blocked and Perplexity-User is blocked on theatlantic.com according to its robots.txt checked on 2026-11-03.

Does theatlantic.com have an llms.txt file?

No, we did not find an llms.txt file on theatlantic.com when we checked on 2026-11-03.

How is this data collected?

We fetch the public robots.txt file of each site and evaluate the rules for 18 AI user agents for the site root. robots.txt is a request, not a technical barrier, and sites may also block bots at the firewall level, which this check does not see.