# robots.txt — moldshieldrestoration.com
# Reviewed 2026-09-09.
#
# Policy: this business WANTS to be found and cited. Nothing is blocked.
#
# The trap this file exists to avoid: blocking GPTBot does NOT stop ChatGPT
# citing you. GPTBot is the TRAINING crawler. The crawler that fetches pages to
# answer live questions — the one that produces citations and referral traffic —
# is OAI-SearchBot. Blocking the training crawler while assuming it protects or
# controls ChatGPT visibility is a common and costly mistake.
#
# Everything below is explicit rather than relying on the catch-all, so that a
# future edit cannot accidentally remove a retrieval crawler.

# ---------------------------------------------------------------
# Search engines
# ---------------------------------------------------------------
User-agent: Googlebot
Allow: /

User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Allow: /

User-agent: Bingbot
Allow: /

# ---------------------------------------------------------------
# AI retrieval crawlers — these fetch pages to answer live queries
# and are the ones that produce citations. Always allow.
# ---------------------------------------------------------------
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /

User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Allow: /

User-agent: Claude-SearchBot
Allow: /

User-agent: Claude-User
Allow: /

User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /

User-agent: Perplexity-User
Allow: /

# ---------------------------------------------------------------
# AI training crawlers — allowed deliberately.
# Training presence contributes to a brand being known to these models,
# which is the strongest measured correlate with being cited.
# ---------------------------------------------------------------
User-agent: GPTBot
Allow: /

User-agent: ClaudeBot
Allow: /

User-agent: Google-Extended
Allow: /

User-agent: Applebot
Allow: /

User-agent: Applebot-Extended
Allow: /

User-agent: Amazonbot
Allow: /

User-agent: meta-externalagent
Allow: /

User-agent: CCBot
Allow: /

# ---------------------------------------------------------------
# Everything else
# ---------------------------------------------------------------
User-agent: *
Allow: /

Sitemap: https://moldshieldrestoration.com/sitemap.xml