Last month I pulled the access logs on one of my client sites and counted nine separate AI crawlers hitting it in a single 24-hour window. Three I had never heard of. Two were ignoring robots.txt. One was hammering the same product page 400 times. If you run a WordPress site in 2026, this is the new normal, and most “15 bots to know” guides are not keeping up.
Search engines, AI platforms, and social networks all rely on automated bots to discover and index your website’s content. According to Imperva’s 2024 Bad Bot Report, bots now account for nearly 50% of all internet traffic, with both helpful crawlers and malicious scrapers visiting your pages daily. In 2026 the share has shifted: AI training and answer-engine crawlers are now the fastest-growing slice, and most WordPress site owners have never seen them in their server logs.
This crawler list covers the 22 most common bots and spiders you will actually encounter in 2026, organized by category, with verbatim user-agent strings pulled from each vendor’s own documentation, an allow or block recommendation per bot, and copy-paste robots.txt rules. We added seven net-new entries for the 2026 wave: OAI-SearchBot, Claude-Web, PerplexityBot, Perplexity-User, Meta-ExternalAgent, DuckAssistBot, and Bytespider. Bookmark this as your quick reference for identifying bot traffic in access.log.
What Are Web Crawlers?
A web crawler (also called a web spider, bot, or robot) is an automated program that systematically browses the internet to discover, read, and index web pages. Crawlers follow links from one page to another, building a map of the web that search engines and other services use to organize information.
Googlebot is the most well-known web crawler, responsible for indexing billions of pages for Google Search. But dozens of other crawlers operate across the web, each serving a different purpose.
How Do Web Crawlers Work?
A web crawler starts with a seed list of URLs. It visits each URL, reads the page content and HTML structure, extracts all the links it finds, and adds those new URLs to its queue. The crawler then repeats this process continuously.
As it works, the crawler stores the page data in an index, a structured database that allows the parent service (such as Google Search) to quickly retrieve relevant results. Crawlers follow rules set in your site’s robots.txt file and respect meta directives like noindex and nofollow to determine which pages to skip.
Most crawlers also implement a crawl rate limit to avoid overloading your server with too many requests at once.
Types of Web Crawlers
Understanding the different types of web crawlers helps you decide which ones to allow or block on your site.
General-purpose crawlers index the entire web for search engines. Googlebot, Bingbot, and Yandex Bot fall into this category. They aim to discover and catalog as much content as possible.
AI training crawlers visit websites to collect data used for training large language models (LLMs). GPTBot, ClaudeBot, and Google-Extended are examples. These are newer and more controversial because they use content for AI model training rather than search indexing.
Social media crawlers fetch page metadata (title, description, image) when someone shares a link on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. They generate the link preview cards you see in social feeds.
SEO and analytics crawlers scan websites to collect data for marketing and SEO tools. SEMrushBot and AhrefsBot gather backlink data, keyword rankings, and site health metrics that digital marketers rely on.
Focused crawlers target specific types of content, such as academic papers, news articles, or e-commerce product data, rather than indexing the entire web.
Looking for ways to protect your website from hackers? Check out the 5 Best WordPress Security Plugins to Protect Your Site
22 Most Common Web Crawlers in 2026
Here is the complete bot crawler list for 2026, organized by category. For each crawler, you will find its purpose, user-agent string, and key details.
Search Engine Crawlers
1. Googlebot
Googlebot is Google’s primary web crawler and the most active bot on the internet. It discovers and indexes web pages for Google Search, Google Images, Google News, and other Google services.
- User-Agent:
Googlebot/2.1andGooglebot-Image/1.0 - Owner: Google
- Purpose: Indexing pages for Google Search
- Crawl frequency: Continuously, with a crawl budget assigned per site based on site authority and server capacity
- Key detail: Googlebot renders JavaScript, meaning it processes dynamically loaded content the same way a browser does. Google Search Console lets you monitor Googlebot’s crawl activity and fix indexing issues.
2. Bingbot
Bingbot is Microsoft’s web crawler that indexes pages for Bing Search, Yahoo Search (which is powered by Bing), and Microsoft’s AI-powered Copilot search.
- User-Agent:
bingbot/2.0 - Owner: Microsoft
- Purpose: Indexing pages for Bing and Yahoo Search
- Crawl frequency: Continuous, with configurable crawl rate via Bing Webmaster Tools
- Key detail: Bingbot prioritizes mobile-friendly pages and supports IndexNow, a protocol that lets you notify Bing instantly when content changes instead of waiting for the next crawl.
3. Yandex Bot
Yandex Bot is the web crawler for Yandex, the largest search engine in Russia and the fourth-largest search engine globally by market share.
- User-Agent:
YandexBot/3.0 - Owner: Yandex
- Purpose: Indexing pages for Yandex Search
- Crawl frequency: Continuous
- Key detail: Yandex Bot supports multiple languages and prioritizes geographically relevant content. If your site targets Russian, Turkish, or CIS-region audiences, optimizing for Yandex Bot is important. Yandex provides its own Webmaster Tools for monitoring crawl activity.
4. DuckDuckBot
DuckDuckBot is the web crawler used by DuckDuckGo, the privacy-focused search engine that does not track users or personalize search results.
- User-Agent:
DuckDuckBot/1.1 - Owner: DuckDuckGo
- Purpose: Indexing pages for DuckDuckGo Search
- Crawl frequency: Less frequent than Googlebot or Bingbot
- Key detail: DuckDuckGo also sources results from over 400 other sources including Bing, Wikipedia, and its own crawler. DuckDuckBot respects robots.txt and is privacy-focused by design.
5. Applebot
Applebot is Apple’s web crawler, introduced in 2015. It powers search results in Siri, Spotlight Suggestions, and Safari’s search features.
- User-Agent:
Applebot/0.1 - Owner: Apple
- Purpose: Powering Siri, Spotlight, and Safari search suggestions
- Crawl frequency: Moderate
- Key detail: Applebot renders JavaScript and CSS, so it sees your pages as users do. If no specific Applebot rules exist in robots.txt, it follows Googlebot’s directives as a fallback. Ranking factors include user engagement, content relevance, link quality, and web design characteristics.
6. Baidu Spider
Baidu Spider is the web crawler for Baidu, the dominant search engine in China with over 70% market share in mainland China.
- User-Agent:
Baiduspider/2.0 - Owner: Baidu
- Purpose: Indexing pages for Baidu Search
- Crawl frequency: Continuous, configurable via Baidu Webmaster Tools (Baidu Ziyuan)
- Key detail: If you target Chinese-speaking audiences, Baidu Spider is essential. It handles Chinese character sets natively and offers image-specific (
Baiduspider-image) and video-specific (Baiduspider-video) variants. Baidu Webmaster Tools lets you submit sitemaps and monitor crawl issues.
AI Training Crawlers
7. GPTBot (OpenAI)
GPTBot is OpenAI’s training crawler. It collects publicly available web content to train future GPT models. The verbatim user-agent string from OpenAI’s official bot documentation in 2026 is:
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; GPTBot/1.3; +https://openai.com/gptbot)
- Owner: OpenAI
- Purpose: Training data collection for GPT models
- Allow or block? Block if you do not want your content used to train future models. Allow if you want potential surfacing in OpenAI products and accept training use.
- Key detail: GPTBot is distinct from
OAI-SearchBot(the SearchGPT indexer, entry #16 below) andChatGPT-User(real-time browsing when a person asks ChatGPT a question). Blocking GPTBot does not block the other two. For a deeper WordPress breakdown, see the AI crawler robots.txt guide on The Plus Addons.
robots.txt rule:
User-agent: GPTBot Disallow: /
8. ClaudeBot (Anthropic)
ClaudeBot is Anthropic’s training crawler for the Claude family of models. Verbatim user-agent from Anthropic’s bot documentation:
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com)
- Owner: Anthropic
- Purpose: Training data for Claude models
- Allow or block? Most WordPress sites should allow it. Anthropic respects robots.txt and ClaudeBot traffic is currently low compared to GPTBot. Block if you have a competitive content concern. For an allow-vs-block decision framework with real access-log numbers, read ClaudeBot: should you allow or block on WordPress.
- Key detail: Separate from
Claude-Web, the on-demand fetcher (entry #17 below). Blocking ClaudeBot does not block Claude-Web.
robots.txt rule:
User-agent: ClaudeBot Disallow: /
9. Google-Extended
Google-Extended is a robots.txt control token, not a separate crawler. Per Google’s official common crawlers documentation: “Crawling is done with existing Google user agent strings; the robots.txt user-agent token is used in a control capacity.” It lets you opt out of having your content train Gemini and ground Gemini Apps and Vertex AI, without affecting Googlebot or your Search rankings.
- robots.txt token:
Google-Extended(no version, no dedicated UA string) - Owner: Google
- Purpose: Opt-out signal for Gemini training and Vertex AI grounding
- Allow or block? Block if you do not want your content training Gemini or grounding Gemini Apps. Blocking has zero impact on Google Search ranking, confirmed by Google. If you also want to manage how Google AI Overviews surfaces your content, see the WordPress AI Overview optimization playbook.
- Key detail: This is a control token only. Real fetches still arrive with the Googlebot UA. You cannot grep your logs for “Google-Extended” hits because the token never appears in the UA header.
robots.txt rule:
User-agent: Google-Extended Disallow: /
Social Media Crawlers
10. Facebook Crawler
Facebook Crawler (also known as Facebot) accesses your site when someone shares a link on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, or Messenger. It fetches Open Graph metadata to build the link preview card.
- User-Agent:
facebookexternalhit/1.1andfacebookcatalog/1.0 - Owner: Meta
- Purpose: Generating link preview cards on Meta platforms
- Crawl frequency: On-demand (triggered when a link is shared)
- Key detail: Facebook Crawler reads Open Graph tags (
og:title,og:description,og:image) from your page’s HTML. If these tags are missing, the preview card will be incomplete. Use Meta’s Sharing Debugger tool to test and refresh your link previews.
11. Twitterbot
Twitterbot (now X Bot) fetches page metadata when a link is shared on X (formerly Twitter) to generate Twitter Card previews.
- User-Agent:
Twitterbot/1.0 - Owner: X Corp (formerly Twitter)
- Purpose: Generating Twitter Card previews
- Crawl frequency: On-demand (triggered when a link is shared)
- Key detail: Twitterbot reads Twitter Card meta tags (
twitter:card,twitter:title,twitter:description,twitter:image) from your page. If Twitter-specific tags are missing, it falls back to Open Graph tags. Use X’s Card Validator to preview how your links will appear.
12. LinkedInBot
LinkedInBot fetches page metadata when a link is shared on LinkedIn to generate the link preview that appears in posts and messages.
- User-Agent:
LinkedInBot/1.0 - Owner: LinkedIn (Microsoft)
- Purpose: Generating link previews on LinkedIn
- Crawl frequency: On-demand (triggered when a link is shared)
- Key detail: LinkedInBot reads Open Graph tags, similar to Facebook Crawler. Use LinkedIn’s Post Inspector tool to test and refresh your link previews. For B2B websites, optimizing for LinkedInBot is especially important since LinkedIn is a primary traffic source.
SEO and Analytics Crawlers
13. SEMrushBot
SEMrushBot is the web crawler used by Semrush, one of the largest SEO and digital marketing platforms. It collects data on backlinks, keyword rankings, and website performance.
- User-Agent:
SemrushBot/7 - Owner: Semrush
- Purpose: Collecting SEO and marketing data
- Crawl frequency: Continuous
- Key detail: SEMrushBot does not affect your search engine rankings. It collects data that Semrush users access for competitor research, backlink analysis, and site audits. You can safely block it if you do not want your site’s data appearing in Semrush’s database.
14. AhrefsBot
AhrefsBot is the web crawler for Ahrefs, a popular SEO toolset known for its backlink database. It operates one of the most active crawlers on the web.
- User-Agent:
AhrefsBot/7.0 - Owner: Ahrefs
- Purpose: Building Ahrefs’ backlink index and SEO database
- Crawl frequency: Very frequent (Ahrefs crawls approximately 8 billion pages daily)
- Key detail: AhrefsBot is one of the most aggressive crawlers on the web. According to Ahrefs, it processes around 8 billion pages every 24 hours. If it causes performance issues on smaller servers, you can reduce its crawl rate or block it via robots.txt.
15. Slurp Bot (Yahoo)
Slurp Bot was Yahoo’s web crawler. While Yahoo Search is now powered by Bing’s index, Slurp Bot historically played a major role in web indexing and still appears in some server logs.
- User-Agent:
Slurp - Owner: Yahoo (now Oath/Verizon Media)
- Purpose: Historically indexed pages for Yahoo Search
- Crawl frequency: Rare (Yahoo Search now uses Bingbot)
- Key detail: Slurp Bot is largely retired since Yahoo transitioned to Bing’s search index. You may still see it in legacy server logs, but it no longer significantly impacts your search visibility.
AI Search and Answer-Engine Crawlers (the 2026 wave)
This is the new category most “list of crawlers” articles still skip. These bots are different from the AI training crawlers above. They power answer engines, citation results, and on-demand AI browsing. Vendor docs were updated through April and May 2026, and the user-agent strings below are pulled verbatim from each vendor’s own bot page.
16. OAI-SearchBot (OpenAI)
OAI-SearchBot is OpenAI’s SearchGPT indexer, a separate bot from GPTBot and ChatGPT-User. It powers the search index inside ChatGPT search results and is the one you want crawling your site if you care about appearing in OpenAI’s search surface. Verbatim user-agent:
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/131.0.0.0 Safari/537.36; compatible; OAI-SearchBot/1.3; +https://openai.com/searchbot
- Owner: OpenAI
- Purpose: Indexes content for SearchGPT / ChatGPT search results (citation surface, not training)
- Allow or block? Allow. This is the search index, not the training crawler. Blocking it removes your site from ChatGPT search citations.
- Key detail: You can block GPTBot (training) while allowing OAI-SearchBot (search). They are separately controllable in robots.txt.
robots.txt rule to allow:
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot Allow: /
17. Claude-Web (Anthropic on-demand fetcher)
Claude-Web is the on-demand fetcher Anthropic uses when a Claude user pastes a URL or asks Claude to read a specific page. It is distinct from ClaudeBot (entry #8, the training crawler). It is the Anthropic equivalent of ChatGPT-User. Note that Anthropic’s documentation currently surfaces the canonical ClaudeBot UA only; Claude-Web requests are user-initiated and may not honor robots.txt the same way training crawlers do.
- Robots.txt token:
Claude-Webandanthropic-aiare both documented opt-out tokens - Owner: Anthropic
- Purpose: Real-time fetch when a Claude user asks Claude to read a URL
- Allow or block? Allow on most public content. Blocking it stops Claude from reading your pages when users ask, which removes you from Claude’s answers entirely.
- Key detail: Separate from
ClaudeBot. Block one, allow the other.
robots.txt rule to allow Claude-Web while blocking the training bot:
User-agent: ClaudeBot Disallow: / User-agent: Claude-Web Allow: /
18. PerplexityBot (Perplexity)
PerplexityBot is Perplexity AI’s web indexer. It surfaces and links websites in Perplexity’s answer engine results. Perplexity explicitly states it is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models. Verbatim user-agent from the Perplexity bots documentation:
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; PerplexityBot/1.0; +https://perplexity.ai/perplexitybot)
- Owner: Perplexity AI
- Purpose: Continuous web indexing for Perplexity answer engine (not training)
- Allow or block? Allow. Perplexity citations drive real referral clicks. For a breakdown of how Perplexity decides which WordPress sites to cite, see how Perplexity AI cites WordPress sites.
- Key detail: Distinct from Perplexity-User (entry #19), the on-demand fetcher.
robots.txt rule to allow:
User-agent: PerplexityBot Allow: /
19. Perplexity-User (Perplexity on-demand)
Perplexity-User activates when a Perplexity user submits a query that requires fetching a specific page. Verbatim user-agent:
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; Perplexity-User/1.0; +https://perplexity.ai/perplexity-user)
- Owner: Perplexity AI
- Purpose: Real-time fetch triggered by a user query
- Allow or block? Allow. Per Perplexity’s own docs, this fetcher “generally ignores robots.txt rules” since a human initiated the request. Blocking it does little, and the request still arrives.
- Key detail: If you see Perplexity-User in your logs, that is a real user asking Perplexity to read your page. That is a citation opportunity, not a bot to block.
20. Meta-ExternalAgent (Meta AI)
Meta-ExternalAgent is Meta’s general-purpose AI crawler, used for training foundational AI models and for direct content indexing across Meta’s surfaces. Verbatim user-agent strings from Meta’s web crawlers documentation:
meta-externalagent/1.1 (+https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/webmasters/crawler)
- Owner: Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp parent)
- Purpose: Training data for Meta AI plus direct content indexing
- Allow or block? Block if you do not want Meta training on your content. Blocking Meta-ExternalAgent does not affect the original Facebook Crawler (entry #10, link previews).
- Key detail: Meta also operates
meta-externalfetcher/1.1, an AI-agent-task crawler that “may disregard robots.txt rules” per Meta’s own documentation. Plan accordingly.
robots.txt rule:
User-agent: Meta-ExternalAgent Disallow: /
21. DuckAssistBot (DuckDuckGo)
DuckAssistBot powers DuckDuckGo’s AI-assisted answers in search results. Verbatim user-agent from DuckDuckGo’s help page:
DuckAssistBot/1.2; (+http://duckduckgo.com/duckassistbot.html)
- Owner: DuckDuckGo
- Purpose: Real-time crawl to power DuckDuckGo’s AI-assisted answers with attributed source citations
- Allow or block? Allow. Per DuckDuckGo’s docs, the data is not used for training. It is only used for citation. Blocking removes your site from DuckAssist’s source attribution.
- Key detail: Blocking takes 72 hours to take effect per DuckDuckGo. Blocking does not affect your regular DuckDuckGo organic search rankings.
robots.txt rule to allow:
User-agent: DuckAssistBot Allow: /
22. Bytespider (ByteDance / TikTok)
Bytespider is ByteDance’s training crawler. It downloads website content for datasets used to train ByteDance AI systems including the Doubao chatbot. Verbatim user-agent:
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Bytespider; spider-feedback@bytedance.com) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/70.0.0.0 Safari/537.36
- Owner: ByteDance (TikTok parent)
- Purpose: Training data for ByteDance AI models including the Doubao chatbot
- Allow or block? Most Western sites block. Bytespider has a history of aggressive crawl rates and limited reciprocal value, since Doubao primarily serves Chinese-language users. Allow if you want to be indexed for Chinese-language AI search.
- Key detail: The UA mimics a Chrome 70 desktop browser. If you only filter by “compatible” plus “Bytespider”, you will catch it. Do not rely on Chrome-version filtering.
robots.txt rule:
User-agent: Bytespider Disallow: /
How to Control Web Crawler Access on WordPress
WordPress gives you several ways to manage which crawlers can access your site and which pages they can index.
robots.txt: Your site’s robots.txt file (located at yourdomain.com/robots.txt) is the primary way to control crawler access. You can block specific user-agents, disallow specific directories, or set a crawl delay.
# Block AI training crawlers
User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /
User-agent: ClaudeBot
Disallow: /
User-agent: Google-Extended
Disallow: /
# Allow search engine crawlers
User-agent: Googlebot
Allow: /
User-agent: Bingbot
Allow: /Meta robots tags: Add <meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow"> to specific pages you want to exclude from indexing entirely.
WordPress SEO plugins: Plugins like Rank Math and Yoast SEO let you set noindex/nofollow rules per page, per post type, or per taxonomy from the WordPress dashboard without editing code.
Nexter Extension includes built-in security features that help protect your WordPress site from malicious bots and unwanted crawler traffic. With features like XML-RPC disabling, login protection, and IP-based access controls, you can manage bot access alongside your 50+ other site management tools from one unified dashboard.
Further Read: How about highly securing your website content from malicious attacks and cyber threats? Here’s the blog about the 5 Best WordPress Content Protection Plugins.
Beyond robots.txt, two newer controls matter in 2026. The first is llms.txt for WordPress, a separate file that gives large language models a curated, machine-friendly view of your most important pages. It does not replace robots.txt, it complements it. The second is firewall-level blocking. If you need a hard block against bots that ignore robots.txt, write a Cloudflare Firewall Rule matching the user-agent string and return a 403. That stops the request at Cloudflare’s edge before your WordPress server burns CPU on it. Our Cloudflare Turnstile guide covers the broader Cloudflare-as-WordPress-shield setup if you have not configured the edge yet.
One pattern I keep seeing on the sites I audit: people add the AI bots to robots.txt but never check if their theme is shipping a bloated DOM that those bots cannot easily parse. If you want crawlers to actually understand and cite your content, the markup matters too. Block themes vs classic themes covers why a clean FSE-based theme is now the easier path for crawler-friendly WordPress in 2026.
Complete Web Crawlers List: Summary Table
| # | Crawler | Owner | Category | User-Agent token | Allow / Block recommendation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Googlebot | Search Engine | Googlebot/2.1 | Allow | |
| 2 | Bingbot | Microsoft | Search Engine | bingbot/2.0 | Allow |
| 3 | Yandex Bot | Yandex | Search Engine | YandexBot/3.0 | Allow |
| 4 | DuckDuckBot | DuckDuckGo | Search Engine | DuckDuckBot/1.1 | Allow |
| 5 | Applebot | Apple | Search Engine | Applebot/0.1 | Allow |
| 6 | Baidu Spider | Baidu | Search Engine | Baiduspider/2.0 | Allow (if China audience) |
| 7 | GPTBot | OpenAI | AI Training | GPTBot/1.3 | Block (or allow if OK with training) |
| 8 | ClaudeBot | Anthropic | AI Training | ClaudeBot/1.0 | Allow |
| 9 | Google-Extended | AI Training token | Google-Extended | Block (zero Search impact) | |
| 10 | Facebook Crawler | Meta | Social Media | facebookexternalhit/1.1 | Allow |
| 11 | Twitterbot | X Corp | Social Media | Twitterbot/1.0 | Allow |
| 12 | LinkedInBot | Social Media | LinkedInBot/1.0 | Allow | |
| 13 | SEMrushBot | Semrush | SEO Tool | SemrushBot/7 | Allow (or block to save bandwidth) |
| 14 | AhrefsBot | Ahrefs | SEO Tool | AhrefsBot/7.0 | Allow (or rate-limit) |
| 15 | Slurp Bot | Yahoo | Search Engine (retired) | Slurp | Allow (legacy) |
| 16 | OAI-SearchBot | OpenAI | AI Search | OAI-SearchBot/1.3 | Allow (citation surface) |
| 17 | Claude-Web | Anthropic | AI On-demand | Claude-Web | Allow (user-initiated) |
| 18 | PerplexityBot | Perplexity | AI Search | PerplexityBot/1.0 | Allow (citation surface) |
| 19 | Perplexity-User | Perplexity | AI On-demand | Perplexity-User/1.0 | Allow (ignores robots.txt anyway) |
| 20 | Meta-ExternalAgent | Meta | AI Training | meta-externalagent/1.1 | Block (training) |
| 21 | DuckAssistBot | DuckDuckGo | AI Search | DuckAssistBot/1.2 | Allow (citation, not training) |
| 22 | Bytespider | ByteDance | AI Training | Bytespider | Block (Western sites) |
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Suggested Reading
- WordPress robots.txt for AI Crawlers: What’s Actually Working in 2026 , the deep-dive on configuring
robots.txtfor every AI bot on this page, with real server-log examples. - llms.txt for WordPress , the newer machine-friendly file format LLMs increasingly check first, complementary to
robots.txt. - ClaudeBot: should you allow or block on WordPress , allow-vs-block decision framework with real access-log numbers.
- How Perplexity AI cites WordPress sites , what gets you cited in Perplexity answers vs ignored.
- Google AI Overview WordPress playbook , how Google-Extended, AI Overviews, and Gemini interact with your site content.
- Cloudflare Turnstile vs Google reCAPTCHA , the edge-level bot defense layer that sits above
robots.txtfor bots that ignore it. - WordPress FSE block themes vs classic themes , why a clean, crawler-friendly DOM matters as much as
robots.txtin 2026.
Wrapping Up
Web crawlers are the backbone of how search engines, AI platforms, and social networks discover and organize content across the internet. This list represents the 22 bots and spiders you are most likely to encounter in your WordPress access logs in 2026, from the classic Googlebot all the way to the 2026 wave of AI search and answer-engine crawlers.
For WordPress site owners, the key takeaway is to welcome crawlers that help your SEO (Googlebot, Bingbot) while controlling access for AI training bots (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended) based on your preferences. Use robots.txt and SEO plugins to set clear rules for each crawler type.
Build on a crawler-friendly WordPress stack
If you want a WordPress theme that outputs clean, semantic HTML that crawlers (search, AI, social) can index efficiently, Nexter Theme loads in under 0.5 seconds with zero jQuery and smart asset management (1 CSS file plus 1 JS file per page). Combined with 90+ Gutenberg blocks and 50+ site extensions, you get a crawler-friendly WordPress stack without plugin bloat. See Nexter pricing to get started.
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FAQs on Web Crawlers
What are the most common web crawlers?
The best-known web crawlers are Googlebot (Google Search), Bingbot (Bing Search), GPTBot (OpenAI), Facebook Crawler (Meta), AhrefsBot (Ahrefs), and SEMrushBot (Semrush). Googlebot is the most active bot web crawler, indexing billions of pages for Google Search. AI training crawlers like GPTBot and ClaudeBot have become increasingly common since 2023. See the full crawlers list above for all 22 bots and spiders.
Is ChatGPT a web crawler?
ChatGPT itself is not a web crawler. However, OpenAI operates two related bots. GPTBot crawls websites to collect training data for AI models. ChatGPT-User browses the web in real time when a ChatGPT user asks a question that requires current information. You can block GPTBot via robots.txt while still allowing ChatGPT-User.
How do I block AI crawlers from my WordPress site?
Add disallow rules to your robots.txt file for each AI crawler you want to block. The most common AI crawler user-agents are GPTBot (OpenAI), ClaudeBot (Anthropic), Google-Extended (Google Gemini), and CCBot (Common Crawl). WordPress SEO plugins like Rank Math also let you manage robots.txt rules from the dashboard.
How do I check which crawlers are visiting my site?
Check your server access logs for bot user-agent strings. Most WordPress hosting dashboards (cPanel, Plesk, RunCloud) provide log viewers. You can also use tools like Google Search Console (for Googlebot activity), Bing Webmaster Tools (for Bingbot), or third-party services like Cloudflare Analytics to monitor bot traffic.
Do web crawlers affect website performance?
Yes, aggressive crawling can increase server load and slow down your site for real visitors. High-frequency crawlers like AhrefsBot (8 billion pages/day) can strain smaller servers. Use crawl rate settings in your robots.txt or webmaster tools to limit how fast bots can crawl your site. Nexter Extension’s 50+ site management tools include performance optimization features that help keep your site fast even under heavy bot traffic.
What is the difference between a web crawler and a web scraper?
A web crawler systematically discovers and indexes pages by following links across the web. A web scraper extracts specific data from web pages for a targeted purpose, such as collecting product prices or contact information. Crawlers are typically operated by search engines and follow robots.txt rules. Scrapers are often custom-built and may not respect access controls.
Does WebCrawler still exist?
Yes, WebCrawler (webcrawler.com) still exists as a metasearch engine. It was one of the first web search engines, launched in 1994. Today it aggregates results from Google and Yahoo rather than operating its own web crawler. It is not related to the general concept of web crawlers (automated bots) discussed in this article.
