AI Crawler Accessibility Checker — Is Your Site Visible to ChatGPT?
Check if AI search engines can crawl and cite your site. Audits robots.txt AI crawler rules, llms.txt, schema, and content access for ChatGPT, Claude & Perplexity. Free.
What is an AI Crawler Accessibility Checker?
## What Is an AI Crawler Accessibility Checker? An AI crawler accessibility checker audits a URL for the signals that decide whether AI search engines can crawl, understand, and cite your content. It is a GEO (generative engine optimization) and AEO (answer engine optimization) readiness check. The tool fetches your page, your robots.txt, and your llms.txt, then reports how each major AI crawler is treated and how easily an AI engine can parse your content. It scores five areas out of 100 and returns a prioritized fix list ordered by impact on AI visibility.
When Should You Use AI Crawler Accessibility Checker?
## How Do AI Search Engines Crawl My Site? AI engines use named crawlers, and the distinction between them matters. Retrieval crawlers — OAI-SearchBot (ChatGPT search), Claude-SearchBot, and PerplexityBot — fetch pages to build live AI answers and citations. Blocking these removes you from those answers. Training crawlers — GPTBot, ClaudeBot, CCBot, Google-Extended, and others — collect data to train models; blocking them is a legitimate choice many publishers make and does not affect AI search visibility. This tool reads your robots.txt and reports the status of each agent, weighting retrieval crawlers far more heavily than training crawlers in the score.
How to Read AI Crawler Accessibility Checker Results
## What Does the Tool Check? It runs five checks. First, robots.txt AI crawler directives: whether each known AI agent is allowed, disallowed, or not mentioned, grouped by company and purpose. Second, llms.txt: whether the advisory discovery file exists at your root and has a valid markdown structure. Third, structured data: which schema.org JSON-LD types are present to help AI parse meaning. Fourth, content accessibility: how much substantive text is in your raw HTML, since most AI crawlers do not execute JavaScript. Fifth, core meta signals: title, meta description, canonical, and h1. Each check feeds a weighted 0–100 score with an Excellent, Good, Needs work, or Poor band.
What Should You Know Before Using AI Crawler Accessibility Checker?
## How Do I Improve My AI Search Visibility? Start with the highest-weight failures. If a retrieval crawler is blocked in robots.txt, unblock it first — that is the single biggest lever for AI search visibility. Make sure your main content is server-rendered so it appears in the raw HTML, because AI crawlers mostly skip JavaScript. Add schema.org structured data so engines can read what each page is. Keep your title, meta description, canonical, and a single h1 in place. Publishing an llms.txt is a low-cost extra, but it is an advisory signal whose adoption still varies in 2026 — treat it as a nice-to-have, not a ranking factor.
## What Are the Limits of This Tool? The content accessibility check reads raw HTML only. It flags pages that look JavaScript-rendered as an indicator, not a definitive verdict — a true render check needs a headless browser, which this tool does not run. The robots.txt check reports directives as written; it cannot guarantee a given crawler obeys them. And llms.txt support remains uneven across engines. Use the results to find and fix the clearest blockers to AI visibility, then confirm critical pages with engine-specific tools where available.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I know if ChatGPT can see my website?
ChatGPT's search uses a crawler called OAI-SearchBot to fetch pages for its answers and citations. If your robots.txt disallows OAI-SearchBot, your pages are excluded from ChatGPT search. This tool reads your robots.txt and reports whether OAI-SearchBot, plus ChatGPT-User and GPTBot, are allowed, disallowed, or not mentioned, so you can confirm ChatGPT can reach your content.
What is the difference between a training crawler and a retrieval crawler?
Retrieval crawlers (OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot, PerplexityBot) fetch pages in real time to build AI search answers and citations — blocking them removes you from those answers. Training crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, CCBot, Google-Extended) collect data to train models. Blocking training crawlers is a legitimate choice that does not affect your AI search visibility, which is why this tool penalizes blocking retrieval crawlers far more heavily.
Does blocking Google-Extended hurt my Google ranking?
No. Google-Extended is purely a training opt-out signal for Gemini. Blocking it stops Google using your content to train Gemini, but it does not affect Google Search ranking, indexing, or appearance in AI Overviews, which are governed by the standard Googlebot. You can block Google-Extended without any impact on your normal search performance.
Do I need an llms.txt file for AI SEO?
An llms.txt file is an advisory discovery file that points AI engines at your most important content in clean markdown. It is helpful but not required, and it is a discovery signal rather than an access-control mechanism. Adoption and compliance across AI engines still vary in 2026, so treat llms.txt as a low-cost extra rather than a ranking factor. Unblocking retrieval crawlers and server-rendering your content matter far more.
Why does my content score low even though the page looks full?
Most AI crawlers read raw HTML and do not execute JavaScript. If your content is rendered client-side by a framework, the raw HTML the crawler receives may contain very little text — an app shell — even though the page looks complete in a browser. This tool measures words in the raw HTML and flags likely JavaScript-rendered pages as an indicator. Server-rendering or pre-rendering your main content fixes it.
Which AI crawlers does this tool check?
It checks the active agents from OpenAI (GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User), Anthropic (ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot, Claude-User), Perplexity (PerplexityBot, Perplexity-User), Google (Google-Extended), and others including Amazonbot, Applebot-Extended, CCBot, Bytespider, and Meta-ExternalAgent. It also flags the deprecated anthropic-ai and claude-web agents if your robots.txt still references them, since Anthropic no longer uses them.