I was wrong about robots.txt
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I was wrong about robots.txt
Recently, I wrote an article about my journey in learning about robots.txt and its implications on the data rights in regards to what I write in my blog. I was confident that I wanted to ban all the crawlers from my website. Turned out there was an unintended consequence that I did not account for. My LinkedIn posts became broken Ever since I changed my robots.txt file, I started seeing that my LinkedIn posts no longer had the preview of the article available. I was not sure what the issue was initially, since before then it used to work just fine. In addition to that, I have noticed that LinkedIn’s algorithm has started serving my posts to fewer and fewer connections. I was a bit confused by the issue, thinking that it might have been a temporary problem. But over the next two weeks the missing post previews did not appear.
Evgenii Pendragon (evgeniipendragon.com)
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This post did not contain any content.
I was wrong about robots.txt
Recently, I wrote an article about my journey in learning about robots.txt and its implications on the data rights in regards to what I write in my blog. I was confident that I wanted to ban all the crawlers from my website. Turned out there was an unintended consequence that I did not account for. My LinkedIn posts became broken Ever since I changed my robots.txt file, I started seeing that my LinkedIn posts no longer had the preview of the article available. I was not sure what the issue was initially, since before then it used to work just fine. In addition to that, I have noticed that LinkedIn’s algorithm has started serving my posts to fewer and fewer connections. I was a bit confused by the issue, thinking that it might have been a temporary problem. But over the next two weeks the missing post previews did not appear.
Evgenii Pendragon (evgeniipendragon.com)
Huh. So in this case, the file actually is respected. Refreshing
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Huh. So in this case, the file actually is respected. Refreshing
Often it is respected, but the resulting problem is platforms conflate things with the questionable AI scraping crawlers to blackmail websites into participating in feeding AI.
For example, Googlebot if enabled won't just list you for search, but will also scrape your contents for Google's AI. Edit: see https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/07/cloudflare-wants-google-to-change-its-ai-search-crawling-google-likely-wont/ as source. I imagine LinkedinBot, given it's microsoft, will feed some other AI of theirs as well on top of the previews.
Until regulation steps in to require AI bots to separately ask for crawling permission, or to actually get a proper license for reuse of the contents, this situation isn't going to improve.
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This post did not contain any content.
I was wrong about robots.txt
Recently, I wrote an article about my journey in learning about robots.txt and its implications on the data rights in regards to what I write in my blog. I was confident that I wanted to ban all the crawlers from my website. Turned out there was an unintended consequence that I did not account for. My LinkedIn posts became broken Ever since I changed my robots.txt file, I started seeing that my LinkedIn posts no longer had the preview of the article available. I was not sure what the issue was initially, since before then it used to work just fine. In addition to that, I have noticed that LinkedIn’s algorithm has started serving my posts to fewer and fewer connections. I was a bit confused by the issue, thinking that it might have been a temporary problem. But over the next two weeks the missing post previews did not appear.
Evgenii Pendragon (evgeniipendragon.com)
So. If I can add something here for everyone's benefit
No search engine really obeys robots.txt
Their publicly acknowledged crawlers do, but they have other crawlers that aren't know that ignore the file.
Google knows every inch of your site, allowed or not.
See, just because a search engine says it doesn't know, doesn't mean it hasn't crawled.
Just doesn't display the results based on your settings. -
This post did not contain any content.
I was wrong about robots.txt
Recently, I wrote an article about my journey in learning about robots.txt and its implications on the data rights in regards to what I write in my blog. I was confident that I wanted to ban all the crawlers from my website. Turned out there was an unintended consequence that I did not account for. My LinkedIn posts became broken Ever since I changed my robots.txt file, I started seeing that my LinkedIn posts no longer had the preview of the article available. I was not sure what the issue was initially, since before then it used to work just fine. In addition to that, I have noticed that LinkedIn’s algorithm has started serving my posts to fewer and fewer connections. I was a bit confused by the issue, thinking that it might have been a temporary problem. But over the next two weeks the missing post previews did not appear.
Evgenii Pendragon (evgeniipendragon.com)
What did he think a crawler is? Why was he surprised that not allowing companies to use his data lead to them not using his data? Looks like he has another surprise coming when he notices that search engines no longer index his blog.
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Often it is respected, but the resulting problem is platforms conflate things with the questionable AI scraping crawlers to blackmail websites into participating in feeding AI.
For example, Googlebot if enabled won't just list you for search, but will also scrape your contents for Google's AI. Edit: see https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/07/cloudflare-wants-google-to-change-its-ai-search-crawling-google-likely-wont/ as source. I imagine LinkedinBot, given it's microsoft, will feed some other AI of theirs as well on top of the previews.
Until regulation steps in to require AI bots to separately ask for crawling permission, or to actually get a proper license for reuse of the contents, this situation isn't going to improve.
Googlebot if enabled won’t just list you for search, but will also scrape your contents for Google’s AI.
False.
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Googlebot if enabled won’t just list you for search, but will also scrape your contents for Google’s AI.
False.
Absolutely true. They'll buy the data they want from some shitty crawler running from some data broker in some far-flung and lawless part of the world, hallucinate the actual source, and pretend they had no idea their "data partner" wasn't respecting robots.txt if they have to, which they won't ever have to do because it's literally impossible to detect and prove and realistically unenforceable.
This is a company that removed it's company motto of "Don't be evil" because it found it too "limiting". Don't be naive.
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Absolutely true. They'll buy the data they want from some shitty crawler running from some data broker in some far-flung and lawless part of the world, hallucinate the actual source, and pretend they had no idea their "data partner" wasn't respecting robots.txt if they have to, which they won't ever have to do because it's literally impossible to detect and prove and realistically unenforceable.
This is a company that removed it's company motto of "Don't be evil" because it found it too "limiting". Don't be naive.
That's very different from what I called false.
What you describe may happen, but probably not as much as you think. Much of that stuff is just not that valuable. Some personal, colloquial writing is necessary, but Google already pays Reddit. Other stuff is better obtained from torrents or shadow libraries like Anna's Archive.
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Googlebot if enabled won’t just list you for search, but will also scrape your contents for Google’s AI.
False.
See here: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/07/cloudflare-wants-google-to-change-its-ai-search-crawling-google-likely-wont/ If you have a source that says it's false, I'd be curious.
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So. If I can add something here for everyone's benefit
No search engine really obeys robots.txt
Their publicly acknowledged crawlers do, but they have other crawlers that aren't know that ignore the file.
Google knows every inch of your site, allowed or not.
See, just because a search engine says it doesn't know, doesn't mean it hasn't crawled.
Just doesn't display the results based on your settings.And allowing the public crawler might also have it feed their AI: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/07/cloudflare-wants-google-to-change-its-ai-search-crawling-google-likely-wont/
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What did he think a crawler is? Why was he surprised that not allowing companies to use his data lead to them not using his data? Looks like he has another surprise coming when he notices that search engines no longer index his blog.
I feel like most casual users would not make the connection of "crawlers" to link previews that they talk about it the article.
Sure, if you understand that robots.txt includes all robots then sure. But that is not how general news media has been talking about robots.txt.
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See here: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/07/cloudflare-wants-google-to-change-its-ai-search-crawling-google-likely-wont/ If you have a source that says it's false, I'd be curious.
Ok. That quotes a tweet by Cloudflare's CEO. IDK what his qualifications are, but his conflict of interest is obvious enough. Real quality journalism there.
Here's Google technical documentation on its crawlers: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/google-common-crawlers
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I feel like most casual users would not make the connection of "crawlers" to link previews that they talk about it the article.
Sure, if you understand that robots.txt includes all robots then sure. But that is not how general news media has been talking about robots.txt.
that is not how general news media has been talking about robots.txt.
Ahh, yes. I think there is a lesson there.
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Ok. That quotes a tweet by Cloudflare's CEO. IDK what his qualifications are, but his conflict of interest is obvious enough. Real quality journalism there.
Here's Google technical documentation on its crawlers: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/google-common-crawlers
So what's the quote from the documentation that backs up your claim? The line "perform other product specific crawls" seems extremely vague by design.
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So what's the quote from the documentation that backs up your claim? The line "perform other product specific crawls" seems extremely vague by design.
I'm not really sure what you are asking here. Did you notice that you can scroll down and see a list of their crawlers?
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I'm not really sure what you are asking here. Did you notice that you can scroll down and see a list of their crawlers?
Nothing on this page seems to contradict the article. But if I simply missed the part that does, I'd be happy to learn.
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Nothing on this page seems to contradict the article. But if I simply missed the part that does, I'd be happy to learn.
You look up what Googlebot does. No AI.
You want to know what crawlers do AI? Just search for "AI", or "training", or some such, or skim through. It's not long. Google-Extended collects training data. Note that Google-Extended is explicitly not used to rank pages.
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