Site owners advised to manage AI crawlers selectively via robots.txt

AI web crawlers serve distinct purposes: training large language models, powering AI search results, or fulfilling user-triggered fetches. Each AI company operates separate bots for these functions, identifiable by unique User-agent names like GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot. Website administrators can control access by using the robots.txt file to allow or disallow specific bots individually. Blocking training crawlers prevents content from being used for AI model datasets, while allowing search crawlers maintains visibility in AI-powered search tools. The robots.txt file controls crawling access but does not hide pages or affect standard search engine indexing.
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