Does msn.com block AI crawlers?
msn.com blocks all 17 AI crawlers we tested, including GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot (checked 2026-10-01).
Retrieval crawlers are blocked too, so AI assistants that fetch a page live to quote and link it cannot read this site. Its content can still appear in answers from older training data or third-party copies, but not as a fresh, cited source.
Every crawler we tested
| Crawler | Used for | Verdict | What we saw |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPTBot OpenAI | ChatGPT (training) | Blocked | Blocked: robots.txt disallows it. |
| OAI-SearchBot OpenAI | ChatGPT search (retrieval) | Blocked | Blocked: robots.txt disallows it. |
| ChatGPT-User OpenAI | ChatGPT (retrieval) | Blocked | Blocked: robots.txt disallows it. |
| ClaudeBot Anthropic | Claude (training) | Blocked | Blocked: robots.txt disallows it. |
| Claude-SearchBot Anthropic | Claude search (retrieval) | Blocked | Blocked: robots.txt disallows it. |
| Claude-User Anthropic | Claude (retrieval) | Blocked | Blocked: robots.txt disallows it. |
| Google-Extended Google | Gemini (training) | Blocked | Blocked: robots.txt disallows it. |
| PerplexityBot Perplexity | Perplexity (retrieval) | Blocked | Blocked: robots.txt disallows it. |
| Perplexity-User Perplexity | Perplexity (retrieval) | Blocked | Blocked: robots.txt disallows it. |
| CCBot Common Crawl | Common Crawl (research) | Blocked | Blocked: robots.txt disallows it. |
| Bytespider ByteDance | ByteDance (training) | Blocked | Blocked: robots.txt disallows it. |
| Applebot-Extended Apple | Apple Intelligence (training) | Blocked | Blocked: robots.txt disallows it. |
| Meta-ExternalAgent Meta | Meta AI (training) | Blocked | Blocked: robots.txt disallows it. |
| Amazonbot Amazon | Alexa (training) | Blocked | Blocked: robots.txt disallows it. |
| cohere-ai Cohere | Cohere (retrieval) | Blocked | Blocked: robots.txt disallows it. |
| Diffbot Diffbot | Diffbot (research) | Blocked | Blocked: robots.txt disallows it. |
| Timpibot Timpi | Timpi (research) | Blocked | Blocked: robots.txt disallows it. |
How that compares
- GPTBot is blocked by 38 of the 239 sites on these pages (15.9%).
- OAI-SearchBot is blocked by 26 of the 243 sites on these pages (10.7%).
- ChatGPT-User is blocked by 30 of the 240 sites on these pages (12.5%).
- ClaudeBot is blocked by 36 of the 240 sites on these pages (15%).
Homepage SEO snapshot
From the Crawlwise SEO Index run, checked 2026-10-05. One fetch of the homepage, so it describes that page and not the whole site.
| Homepage | https://www.msn.com/en-in |
|---|---|
| HTTPS | yes |
| Title | 3 characters |
| Meta description | missing |
| Canonical | none declared |
| Noindex | no |
| H1 elements | 0 |
| Language | en-in |
| JSON-LD types | none |
| hreflang alternates | 0 |
| /sitemap.xml | not found |
| Response time | 164 ms |
How this was measured
We read msn.com’s robots.txt, resolved it with an RFC 9309 matcher for each crawler’s product token, then fetched the homepage once as each crawler. A 403 or a challenge page is a block even when robots.txt allows the crawler; a timeout or rate limit is “not established”, never a block. One probe, from one location, on 2026-10-01, so a rule changed since then is not reflected here. Full methodology.
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Other sites
- bing.com — blocks none of 17
- facebook.com — blocks 11 of 17
- doubleclick.net — blocks none of 17
- cloudflare.com — blocks none of 17
- amazonaws.com — blocks none of 17
- youtube.com — blocks none of 17