Allow or block AddSearchBot on Squarespace: what the AI-crawler checkbox covers

It cannot be done by name. Squarespace’s “Block known artificial intelligence crawlers” checkbox covers a fixed list that does not include AddSearchBot, and robots.txt cannot be edited on Squarespace.

This response

You are ClaudeBot (Anthropic). Citable recognised you as an AI agent, so this is https://getcitable.in/crawlers/addsearchbot/squarespace with the UI removed — the content only. A browser asking for the same address gets the full designed page.

AddSearchBot, and where Squarespace keeps the rule

AddSearchBot is a crawler run by AddSearch. It reads pages ahead of time, to train a model or to build an index.

Squarespace writes robots.txt itself and does not let it be edited. The one control is a checkbox that adds a fixed list of AI crawlers to it.

Step by step

What trips people up

AddSearchBot cannot be refused by name on Squarespace. The names its checkbox does cover are: AI2Bot, Ai2Bot-Dolma, aiHitBot, Amazonbot, anthropic-ai, Applebot-Extended, Bytespider, CCBot, ClaudeBot, cohere-ai, cohere-training-data-crawler, DuckAssistBot, FacebookBot, Google-Extended, GoogleOther, GoogleOther-Image, GoogleOther-Video, GPTBot, img2dataset, Meta-ExternalAgent, MyCentralAIScraperBot, omgili, omgilibot, Quora-Bot, TikTokSpider, YouBot.

Asked, or actually refused?

Squarespace has no setting that refuses a request by its user agent. robots.txt is a request. A crawler that honours it stays out; nothing in the file stops one that does not. What is enforced is what the server or the edge in front of it refuses.

Check it yourself

A 200 means the name is let through; a 403 means something in front of the page refuses it. This tests the name from your own address. A platform that checks a crawler’s address as well may treat the real AddSearchBot differently.

The request:

curl -I -A "AddSearchBot" https://your-site.example/

Questions

How do I block AddSearchBot on Squarespace?

It cannot be done by name. Squarespace’s “Block known artificial intelligence crawlers” checkbox covers a fixed list that does not include AddSearchBot, and robots.txt cannot be edited on Squarespace.

How do I allow AddSearchBot on Squarespace?

Nothing has to be done: no setting on Squarespace names AddSearchBot, so it follows the rules everyone follows.

Can Squarespace actually stop AddSearchBot, or only ask it?

Squarespace has no setting that refuses a request by its user agent. robots.txt is a request. A crawler that honours it stays out; nothing in the file stops one that does not. What is enforced is what the server or the edge in front of it refuses.

Does a rule for AddSearchBot affect Googlebot or my Google rankings?

No. Googlebot goes by its own name and follows its own rules; a group or a firewall rule for AddSearchBot does not apply to it.

Checked against Squarespace's own documentation on 1 October 2026

Related

About Citable

Citable strips the UI from a website for AI agents and serves them only the content.

When an AI agent — ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity or any of the 81 that Citable recognises — opens a page, Citable removes the theme, scripts, navigation and layout and serves only the content: the same facts, at the same URL, on the site's own domain. People and Google still get the full designed page.

How it works: https://getcitable.in/how-it-works · Summary for AI agents: https://getcitable.in/llms.txt


Source: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/addsearchbot/squarespace · Citable · Run the free audit · llms.txt · getcitable@gmail.com