What is AI2Bot? Allen Institute for AI's AI crawler
AI2Bot is the crawler of the Allen Institute for AI, a research non-profit.
41 of the 389 major websites we measure block AI2Bot in robots.txt (11%), making it number 21 of the 30 AI crawlers we track for how often it is blocked. 31 of those sites name it directly in their robots.txt; the rest are covered by a wildcard rule.
Key facts
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Operator | Allen Institute for AI |
| Used for | Allen Institute for AI's open models |
| Type | Model training. Collects content that may be used to train AI models. Blocking it does not usually remove a site from AI search. |
| robots.txt token | AI2Bot |
| Operator's documentation | Read it here |
What blocking AI2Bot does
The institute publishes its user agent so sites can filter or reject the crawler's traffic.
How to allow or block AI2Bot
Add one of these groups to the robots.txt file at the root of your domain. It is a stated preference that well-behaved crawlers read, not an enforcement mechanism.
User-agent: AI2Bot Disallow: /
User-agent: AI2Bot Allow: /
AI2Bot user agent string
The string Allen Institute for AI documents. Version numbers can change, so match on the name.
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible) AI2Bot (+https://www.allenai.org/crawler)
How to verify a request is really AI2Bot
Anyone can put a crawler's name in a user agent string, so the name alone proves nothing. We did not find a published IP list or reverse DNS rule from Allen Institute for AI.
How to whitelist AI2Bot in a firewall or CDN
robots.txt only states a preference. A firewall, CDN or bot protection service can still refuse the request, and the crawler then gets an error even though robots.txt allows it.
- Check that no group in your robots.txt blocks it, using the rule above.
- Add an allow rule in your firewall or CDN that matches the name in the user agent. Keep the rule narrow, because anyone can copy a name.
- Check your server logs for a 200 response from AI2Bot afterwards.
On Cloudflare, also check AI Crawler and Agent access policies, which can block search, agent and training traffic across a site.
Why AI2Bot gets a 403 or 405 error
A 403 means the server refused the request, which usually points to a firewall or bot rule. A 405 means the server refused the request's method, so check any rule that only permits certain methods. A crawler that obeys robots.txt won't request a page it is told to avoid, so an error in your logs points to your server's configuration. To stop it deliberately at the server, this nginx rule returns a 403:
if ($http_user_agent ~* "AI2Bot") {
return 403;
}Which sites recently changed their rules for AI2Bot?
| Date first seen | Site | Change |
|---|---|---|
| 28 September 2026 | airbnb.com | Started blocking |
See the full change log.
Who blocks AI2Bot, by sector
| Sector | Sites measured | Blocking | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Technology media | 25 | 10 | 40% |
| News publishers | 44 | 14 | 32% |
| Social and media platforms | 28 | 8 | 29% |
| E-commerce and retail | 19 | 2 | 11% |
| Reference and research | 25 | 2 | 8% |
| Finance and business media | 29 | 2 | 7% |
| Health publishers | 16 | 1 | 6% |
| Travel | 19 | 1 | 5% |
| SaaS platforms | 54 | 1 | 2% |
| AI companies | 28 | 0 | 0% |
| Developer references | 34 | 0 | 0% |
| Government and institutions | 19 | 0 | 0% |
| Hosting and infrastructure | 23 | 0 | 0% |
| SEO and marketing tools | 26 | 0 | 0% |
Sites blocking AI2Bot
academia.edu, airbnb.com, amazon.com, androidcentral.com, asahi.com, barrons.com, behance.net, canva.com, cnn.com, disneyplus.com, drugs.com, dw.com, flickr.com, france24.com, gizmodo.com, globeandmail.com, hackernoon.com, hulu.com, imdb.com, instacart.com, lemonde.fr, lifehacker.com, marketwatch.com, mashable.com, netflix.com, pinterest.com, reddit.com, reuters.com, sciencedirect.com, slate.com, spiegel.de, techradar.com, telegraph.co.uk, theregister.com, thetimes.co.uk, theverge.com, tomshardware.com, usatoday.com, vox.com, wsj.com, zdnet.com.
Sites that allow AI2Bot by name
jasper.ai, pcmag.com, squarespace.com, stability.ai.
See all 30 AI crawlers, the rule change log or the full study. Being reachable is only the first step: how AI search engines choose what to cite covers the rest.
Cite this data
You are welcome to quote or republish these figures. Please credit IndexHalo with a link to this page (CC BY 4.0). All our datasets are on the data page.
IndexHalo. "AI2Bot block rate across major websites." Measured 3 November 2026. https://www.indexhalo.com/ai-crawlers/ai2bot/
<a href="https://www.indexhalo.com/ai-crawlers/ai2bot/">AI2Bot block rate across major websites, IndexHalo</a>