CCBot & robots.txt
Allow or Block Common Crawl
Common Crawl's open dataset is widely used for AI training. Control whether your content is included.
Last verified against Common Crawl's CCBot page and FAQ: 2026-10-18
What is CCBot?
CCBot is the web crawler run by Common Crawl, a non-profit organization that maintains one of the largest open web datasets in existence. Common Crawl archives web content, and this data is freely available for anyone to download and use.
This matters for AI visibility because most major AI models are trained partly on Common Crawl data. GPT-4, Claude, LLaMA, Gemini, and many open-source models all use Common Crawl as a foundational training dataset. Blocking CCBot is effectively blocking a shared pipeline to multiple AI systems at once. Note this is a training decision: it does not affect the live AI search indexes (OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot, PerplexityBot) that decide whether AI search engines can cite you today.
CCBot identifies itself with the user-agent token CCBot and respects robots.txt rules.
robots.txt Syntax for CCBot
Copy-paste these examples into your robots.txt file.
Allow CCBot (Recommended for AI visibility)
# Allow Common Crawl
User-agent: CCBot
Allow: /
Allows your content to be included in Common Crawl's open dataset, which feeds AI model training across multiple platforms.
Block CCBot
# Block Common Crawl
User-agent: CCBot
Disallow: /
Prevents future crawls. Note: Common Crawl archives past data indefinitely, so historical snapshots of your site may still exist in older datasets.
Partial Access with Crawl Delay
# Allow CCBot with rate limiting
User-agent: CCBot
Allow: /blog/
Allow: /docs/
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /api/
Crawl-delay: 10
CCBot respects Crawl-delay. This lets Common Crawl index your public content without overloading your server.
When to Allow vs Block CCBot
Allow CCBot When...
- ✓You want maximum AI visibility across all platforms
- ✓You want your content in open research datasets
- ✓You publish open-access or educational content
- ✓You support the open data ecosystem
Block CCBot When...
- ✗You want maximum control over AI training usage
- ✗Your content is premium or subscription-based
- ✗You have strict copyright or licensing terms
- ✗You want to limit crawl load on your server
Frequently Asked Questions
What is CCBot and Common Crawl?
CCBot is the web crawler operated by Common Crawl, a non-profit that maintains an open dataset of web pages. This dataset is freely available and is used as training data by most major AI models, including those from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta. Blocking CCBot doesn't just affect one AI — it affects the training data pipeline for many.
Which AI models use Common Crawl data?
Common Crawl data has been widely used for AI training, but the model vendors do not all document it, so BotView does not name specific models. Common Crawl is a large public web dataset; commoncrawl.org has current size and crawl dates.
If I block GPTBot but allow CCBot, can OpenAI still use my content?
Potentially, yes. If CCBot crawls your content and includes it in the Common Crawl dataset, that data is publicly available for anyone to use — including OpenAI. For maximum control, you would need to block both GPTBot and CCBot. However, Common Crawl data may already include historical snapshots of your site.
Does blocking CCBot affect my Google Search ranking?
No. CCBot is operated by Common Crawl, which is completely independent from Google. Blocking CCBot has no impact on Googlebot, Google Search ranking, or Google's index. It only affects whether your content appears in Common Crawl's open dataset.
How often does CCBot crawl websites?
Common Crawl publishes its crawl schedule at commoncrawl.org. Its FAQ says it obeys the Crawl-delay parameter for robots.txt. Its CCBot page gives the user agent as CCBot/2.0 (https://commoncrawl.org/faq/) and IP ranges at https://index.commoncrawl.org/ccbot.json; verify a request by reverse DNS to a crawl.commoncrawl.org hostname (sources checked 2026-10-18).
Related robots.txt Guides
- AI robots.txt checker — See which of 18 AI crawlers your live robots.txt blocks
- GPTBot & robots.txt — OpenAI / ChatGPT
- ClaudeBot & robots.txt — Anthropic / Claude
- PerplexityBot & robots.txt — Perplexity AI
- Google-Extended & robots.txt — Google / Gemini
- Check all 18 AI crawlers at once
Check Your CCBot Configuration
See if Common Crawl and other AI crawlers can access your site. Full report on all 18 AI bots.
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