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Google clarifies that robots.txt controls crawler access, not how AI uses indexed data

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TLDR

Google clarified that robots.txt controls which bots can crawl a site, not what those bots do with the data they collect, and that non-standard rules are silently ignored under RFC 9309.

Optimixed Overview

Optimixed's original report on this story.

Google confirmed that robots.txt is designed to limit crawler access to a site, not to restrict how AI models train on or use indexed content. Under RFC 9309, site owners' custom emoji tokens and non-standard rules are silently dropped by compliant parsers. The clarification raises questions about how Google-Extended, the token for controlling AI model training, fits into a file intended solely for access control.

Topics:AI & Machine Learning in SEOSEO News & Algorithm Updates
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