AI Bot Protection Guide

Protect your content from AI training and scraping with comprehensive bot blocking

The AI Content Challenge

In 2025, AI companies are aggressively crawling the web to train their models on content without permission or compensation. Your original content, creative work, and proprietary information could be used to train AI systems that compete with your business.

ProRank SEO provides multiple layers of protection against AI scrapers, from polite requests via meta tags to complete blocking through robots.txt rules.

Important: Once AI systems train on your content, it cannot be removed from their models. Prevention is your only effective strategy.

Protection Methods

Method	Effectiveness	Scope	Compliance
Robots.txt Blocking	Very High	Complete blocking	Mandatory
Meta Tags (noai)	Medium	Content visible	Voluntary
X-Robots-Tag	High	HTTP headers	Mandatory
Combined Approach	Maximum	Multi-layer	Both

🛡️ Strongest Protection: Robots.txt Blocking

Completely prevents AI bots from accessing your site. They cannot crawl, view, or train on any content. This is the most effective method but may block some legitimate AI-powered services.

🤝 Balanced Approach: Meta Tags

Adds noai and noimageai meta tags that politely request AI systems not to train on your content. Respected by ethical companies but not enforceable. Content remains accessible.

✅ Recommended: Combined Protection

Use both robots.txt blocking and meta tags for maximum protection. This ensures compliance from both ethical and aggressive crawlers.

Known AI Bots (2025)

ProRank SEO blocks 50+ known AI bots. Here are the major ones:

Company	Bot Names	Purpose
OpenAI	GPTBot, ChatGPT-User, CCBot, OAI-SearchBot	ChatGPT training & search
Google AI	Google-Extended, Gemini-Bot, Bard-Bot, GoogleOther	Gemini & Bard AI training
Anthropic	Anthropic-AI, Claude-Web, ClaudeBot	Claude AI training
Microsoft	Bingbot-Extended, MSNBot-AI	Bing AI features
Meta	FacebookBot, Meta-ExternalAgent, Meta-AI	Meta AI systems
Image AI	MidJourney-Bot, DALL-E-Bot, StableDiffusion-Bot	Image generation training
Search AI	PerplexityBot, YouBot, Neeva-Bot	AI-powered search
Research	CommonCrawl, AI2Bot, LLM-Crawler	Dataset collection

Plus 40+ additional bots including Apple AI, Amazon AI, research crawlers, and dataset collectors. This list is regularly updated as new AI bots are identified.

Implementation Guide

Method 1: Complete Blocking (Robots.txt)

Go to Technical SEO → Robots & Indexing
Open the Robots.txt tab
Enable "Block AI/ML Training Bots via Robots.txt"
Save settings

Result: All 50+ AI bots will be completely blocked from accessing any part of your site.

Method 2: Polite Request (Meta Tags)

Go to Technical SEO → Robots & Indexing
Open the Content Safeguard tab
Enable "Add noai meta tag" for text protection
Enable "Add noimageai meta tag" for image protection
Save settings

Result: Meta tags will be added to all pages requesting AI systems not to train on your content.

Method 3: Maximum Protection (Combined)

Enable both robots.txt blocking AND meta tags
This provides redundant protection layers
Blocks aggressive bots while signaling preferences to all systems

What Gets Added

Robots.txt Rules (When Enabled)

# Block AI/ML Training Bots
User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Disallow: /

User-agent: Claude-Web
Disallow: /

User-agent: Google-Extended
Disallow: /

User-agent: Gemini-Bot
Disallow: /

# ... (45+ more bots)

# Protect images from AI training
User-agent: img2dataset
Disallow: /wp-content/uploads/
Crawl-delay: 86400

User-agent: Bytespider
Disallow: /wp-content/uploads/
Crawl-delay: 86400

Meta Tags (When Enabled)

<!-- Added to <head> of all pages -->
<meta name="robots" content="noai, noimageai" />

<!-- X-Robots-Tag HTTP Headers also sent -->
X-Robots-Tag: noai, noimageai

Special Considerations

Image Protection

Images require special attention as they're heavily used for AI training:

ProRank blocks image-specific crawlers like img2dataset and Bytespider
Adds crawl-delay of 24 hours for image directories
Blocks /wp-content/uploads/ for AI bots while allowing search engines

Impact on AI-Powered Services

Consider these potential impacts before enabling full blocking:

AI Search: Perplexity, You.com may not include your content
AI Summaries: ChatGPT, Claude won't summarize your pages
AI Features: Google AI Overview may skip your content

If these services are important to your strategy, consider using only meta tags instead of full blocking.

Verification

How to Verify Protection

Check Robots.txt:Visit yoursite.com/robots.txt and verify AI bot rules are present
Inspect Page Source:View source and search for noai meta tags
Check HTTP Headers:Use browser dev tools Network tab to verify X-Robots-Tag headers

Test with User Agent:Use curl to test as a bot:

curl -H &quot;User-Agent: GPTBot&quot; https://yoursite.com/

Frequently Asked Questions

Will this affect my SEO?

No. Google, Bing, and other search engines use different bots (Googlebot, Bingbot) that are not blocked. Only AI training bots are affected.

Can I selectively allow some AI bots?

Yes. Instead of using the toggle, manually edit the robots.txt rules to allow specific bots you trust while blocking others.

Is this legally enforceable?

Robots.txt is a technical standard that legitimate bots follow. While not legally binding in all jurisdictions, violating robots.txt can be considered unauthorized access in some regions.

Will this stop all AI training?

It stops direct crawling by known bots. However, if your content is shared elsewhere or accessed through other means, it could still be used for training. This provides the strongest available protection.

Best Practices

Recommended Actions

✓ Enable protection before content is crawled
✓ Use both robots.txt and meta tags
✓ Protect high-value original content
✓ Monitor for new AI bots regularly
✓ Document your AI use policy
✓ Consider watermarking images

Additional Measures

• Add copyright notices to content
• Use DMCA protection services
• Implement rate limiting
• Monitor server logs for unusual activity
• Consider legal terms of use
• Join industry protection initiatives

Privacy Note: Blocking AI bots also helps protect user privacy by preventing comments, user-generated content, and personal information from being included in AI training datasets.