American Express
americanexpress.comIts robots.txt (the public rules file for bots) has no rules for any AI bot we track. They are covered by its catch-all rule (User-agent: *), which lets them into the site.
Last checked 19 Oct 2026. Rules file read today. Everything we checked · History
Bots that train AI Allowed
Blocking these keeps the site out of future AI training. It does not stop AI from reading the site to answer questions.
Bots for AI search Allowed
Blocking these usually means the site stops showing up as a source in AI answers.
AI assistants Allowed
5 of these 7 companies say their assistants may ignore robots.txt.
Bot by bot
| AI bot | Allowed? | Where the rule is | Company says it follows robots.txt? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bots that train AI · Allowed | |||
| GPTBotOpenAI | Allowed | Not named; the catch-all rule applies | Says yes |
| ClaudeBotAnthropic | Allowed | Not named; the catch-all rule applies | Says yes |
| Google-ExtendedGoogle · opt-out name, not a bot | Allowed | Not named; the catch-all rule applies | Says yes |
| Applebot-ExtendedApple · opt-out name, not a bot | Allowed | Not named; the catch-all rule applies | Says yes |
| CCBotCommon Crawl | Allowed | Not named; the catch-all rule applies | Says yes |
| Meta-ExternalAgentMeta | Allowed | Not named; the catch-all rule applies | Suggests yes |
| BytespiderByteDance | Allowed | Not named; the catch-all rule applies | No statement found |
| MistralAI-TrainingMistral AI | Allowed | Not named; the catch-all rule applies | Says yes |
| AI2BotAllen Institute for AI | Allowed | Not named; the catch-all rule applies | Does not say |
| anthropic-aiAnthropic (legacy) · old name | Allowed | Not named; the catch-all rule applies | Unknown |
| Bots for AI search · Allowed | |||
| OAI-SearchBotOpenAI | Allowed | Not named; the catch-all rule applies | Says yes |
| Claude-SearchBotAnthropic | Allowed | Not named; the catch-all rule applies | Says yes |
| PerplexityBotPerplexity | Allowed | Not named; the catch-all rule applies | Suggests yes |
| AmazonbotAmazon | Allowed | Not named; the catch-all rule applies | Says yes |
| Amzn-SearchBotAmazon | Allowed | Not named; the catch-all rule applies | Says yes |
| DuckAssistBotDuckDuckGo | Allowed | Not named; the catch-all rule applies | Says yes |
| MistralAI-IndexMistral AI | Allowed | Not named; the catch-all rule applies | Suggests yes |
| Meta-WebIndexerMeta | Allowed | Not named; the catch-all rule applies | Suggests yes |
| AI assistants · Allowed | |||
| ChatGPT-UserOpenAI | Allowed | Not named; the catch-all rule applies | Says not always |
| Claude-UserAnthropic | Allowed | Not named; the catch-all rule applies | Says yes |
| Perplexity-UserPerplexity | Allowed | Not named; the catch-all rule applies | Says it mostly ignores it |
| Google-AgentGoogle | Allowed | Not named; the catch-all rule applies | Says it mostly ignores it |
| Meta-ExternalFetcherMeta | Allowed | Not named; the catch-all rule applies | Says not always |
| Amzn-UserAmazon | Allowed | Not named; the catch-all rule applies | Says not always |
| MistralAI-UserMistral AI | Allowed | Not named; the catch-all rule applies | Suggests yes |
| For comparison | |||
| GooglebotRegular search engine, for comparison | Allowed | Not named; the catch-all rule applies | |
| BingbotRegular search engine, for comparison | Allowed | Not named; the catch-all rule applies | |
We test two pages: the homepage, and a made-up page that stands in for the rest of the site. "Blocked" means both are off limits. "Some pages blocked" means only one is. Rules for search results, carts, checkout and accounts don't change these labels, because almost every site keeps all bots out of those pages.
The rules file (robots.txt)
User-agent: *Disallow: /us/rwd/Disallow: /*/apply/Disallow: /en-us/business/tls/partnerships/Disallow: /*/logout User-agent: AhrefsBotDisallow: /*/travel/discover/Disallow: /*/travel/the-hotel-collection/Sitemap: https://www.americanexpress.com/index-sitemap.xml
Everything else we checked
| Front door | Let in The homepage loaded normally for our bot, which says who it is (HTTP 200).GET https://www.americanexpress.com/ as WalledWebBot, from a residential connection in the United States |
|---|---|
| llms.txt | Present · 1.0 KB · "American Express" · 1 linkshttps://www.americanexpress.com/llms.txt |
| Page tags | <meta name="robots" content="index,follow"> |
| Anti-bot software | Served through Akamai. The homepage set an Akamai cookie (bm_sz), which anti-bot software uses.From response headers and cookie names only. A cookie shows the product is there, not how it is set up. |
| Readable by AI | No schema.org structured data on the homepage. Most of the page is script; an agent that does not run JavaScript sees little text.Homepage only. Useful for site owners; not part of the result. |
| Terms of Service | www.americanexpress.com/us/legal-disclosures/website-rules-and-regulations.html?inav=en_us_legalfooter_terms_of_service (found on the homepage) Sentences flagged by keyword. These are machine-selected excerpts, not a legal reading; open the source for context.
|
| Not found | No ai.txt, tdmrep.json, Content-Signal or Content-Usage lines or licensing signals (RSL License, HTTP 402). |
History
44 versions on record since 1 Jan 2023
One square per month, from Internet Archive copies and our own daily checks. Dark: blocked. Gray: some blocked. Light: allowed. Striped: no copy that month.
No AI-relevant changes in 44 recorded versions since 1 Jan 2023.
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