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AI Crawler Check vs the Google Search Console robots.txt report

Search Console is the authoritative answer to one question: what did Google itself fetch, parse and do with your robots.txt? Nothing outside Google can match that. AI Crawler Check answers the questions Search Console does not try to: how every other crawler, especially AI bots, is treated, on any site, without owning the property.

Competitor facts verified 2026-10-18 Source: Search Console Help: robots.txt report

Short answer

Use Search Console for anything about Googlebot: fetch errors, parse warnings, file history and emergency recrawls. Use AI Crawler Check to see how 265 crawlers, including GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot, are treated by the same file, on your site or anyone else's.

Choose Google Search Console robots.txt report when

You need to know exactly what Google fetched, when, and whether it hit a fetch error or parse warning.
You fixed a robots.txt mistake and want to request a recrawl of the file quickly.
You want the version history of the file as Google saw it over the last 30 days.
You need to inspect a specific URL as Googlebot with the URL Inspection tool.
The question is purely about Google Search and you already have a verified property.

Choose AI Crawler Check when

You need to know how AI crawlers are treated, not only Googlebot. We test 265 bots in 8 categories.
You are auditing a site you do not own, such as a prospect, a competitor or a client before access is granted.
You want a per-bot explanation: which group in the file applied and which rule decided the result.
You want AI readiness beyond robots.txt: llms.txt, schema and the rest of the 42 GEO checks.
You need to check many sites quickly, up to 20 URLs per batch.

Side by side

AI Crawler Check compared with Google Search Console robots.txt report
What you are comparing	AI Crawler Check	Google Search Console robots.txt report
Advantage Google Search Console robots.txt report. Whose view of the file	An independent outside-in fetch, interpreted for every crawler we track	Google's own fetch history, straight from the source
Advantage AI Crawler Check. Crawlers covered	265, including AI training, AI search and assistant bots	Google's crawlers only
Advantage AI Crawler Check. Requires owning the site	No. Any public URL	Yes. A verified Domain property or a host-level URL-prefix property
Advantage Google Search Console robots.txt report. Fetch history	Point-in-time result each time you run it	Fetch status and changed versions over the last 30 days
Advantage Google Search Console robots.txt report. Request a recrawl of robots.txt	Not possible; we cannot ask Google to do anything	Yes, for emergencies after a fix
Advantage Google Search Console robots.txt report. Multiple hosts and subdomains	One host per check, batch for more	Top 20 hosts in a Domain property, both http and https
Advantage AI Crawler Check. Explains which rule applied per bot	Yes, the winning group and matching line for each crawler	Highlights parse errors and warnings; URL testing moved to the URL Inspection tool
Advantage AI Crawler Check. Firewall or CDN blocking AI bots	Reported separately from robots.txt rules	Shows only what happened to Google's own requests
Comparable. Cost	Free, no sign-up	Free with a Google account and verified property

Dot colour shows which tool has the edge on that row: AI Crawler Check, Google Search Console robots.txt report, comparable.

Why this comparison exists at all

For years many SEOs tested robots.txt rules in Google's standalone robots.txt Tester. Google replaced it with the robots.txt report inside Search Console, which shows which robots.txt files Google found for the top 20 hosts on a site, when it last crawled them and any warnings or errors. To test whether a particular URL is blocked, Google now points you to the URL Inspection tool, or to its open-source robots.txt parser if you are a developer.

That is a sensible design for Google, but it leaves two gaps. The report is about Google's crawlers only, and it requires a verified property. Neither matters for classic SEO. Both matter a great deal once AI assistants become a source of traffic.

What Search Console does that nobody else can

We want to be precise here. No external tool, ours included, can tell you what Googlebot actually did. Search Console can.

Ground truth for Google. Fetch status, last checked time, file size and parse issues come from Google's own crawl, not a simulation.
History. You can see versions of the file Google fetched over the last 30 days, which is invaluable when someone changed it and nobody remembers when.
A recrawl button. After fixing a critical mistake you can ask Google to fetch the file again. We have no such power.
Multi-host view. A Domain property covers many subdomains in one report.

The question Search Console was never designed to answer

Search Console tells you whether Google can read your site. It does not tell you whether ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity or Meta AI can. Those assistants use their own crawlers, with their own user-agent names, and robots.txt treats each one separately. A file that is perfect for Googlebot can still block GPTBot by name, or catch OAI-SearchBot in a broad User-agent: * rule that was meant for scrapers.

There is also the firewall layer. Search Console reports what happened to Google's requests, which come from Google's published IP ranges and are often treated as trusted. AI crawlers come from other networks, and a bot manager may refuse them even when robots.txt allows them. That failure is invisible from inside Google's tools. An outside-in check, run against the live site and reported per crawler, is how you see it.

A simple routine that uses both

Weekly, in Search Console: glance at the robots.txt report for fetch errors and parse warnings. Anything red there affects Google Search directly.
After any robots.txt, CDN or firewall change: run the crawler access checker to confirm AI search and assistant crawlers are treated the way you intended.
When a client asks about AI visibility: share the crawler matrix. It speaks to ChatGPT and Perplexity, which is the question they are really asking.
When something is wrong for Google: fix it, then use Search Console's recrawl request. That step belongs to Google alone.

Reading the two reports side by side

The two tools describe the same robots.txt file from different angles, so a few combinations come up again and again. Here is how to interpret each one:

Search Console: Fetched, no issues. Our check: AI crawlers allowed. The file is reachable, parses cleanly and treats AI crawlers the way most commercial sites intend. Recheck after the next infrastructure change.
Search Console: Fetched, no issues. Our check: several AI crawlers blocked. The file is valid but contains rules that refuse AI crawlers by name or through User-agent: *. Google is fine; ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity may not be. Decide whether that was intended.
Search Console: Fetched. Our check: firewall or challenge on AI crawlers. Google's verified requests get through, but requests from other networks are refused before robots.txt matters. Look at your bot manager or CDN rules, not the file.
Search Console: Not fetched. Our check: robots.txt unreachable. Both views agree the file is not being served correctly. Fix the server first; nothing else can be judged until the file loads.

Why Google's view is not a proxy for AI visibility

It is tempting to assume that if Google can read a site, AI assistants can too. In practice the two diverge often. AI companies operate their own crawlers, each with its own user-agent and its own rules in your file. Some assistants also fetch pages live when a user asks a question, using user-triggered agents that firewalls may treat as unknown traffic. And many AI crawlers do not run JavaScript, so content that Google renders without trouble can be invisible to them. Search Console was built to answer Google's questions very well. Treating it as an AI visibility report asks it to answer questions it never measured.

Where we would send you elsewhere For anything about Googlebot's real fetches, parse errors, file history or a recrawl request, use the Search Console robots.txt report. It is the only first-hand source. Use AI Crawler Check for every crawler that is not Google.

Frequently asked questions

Did Google remove the robots.txt Tester?

Google replaced the old standalone tester with the robots.txt report in Search Console. For testing whether a specific URL is blocked, Google's help page points to the URL Inspection tool, and developers can use Google's open-source robots.txt library.

Does Search Console show whether AI crawlers are blocked?

No. The report covers Google's own fetches of your robots.txt. It does not evaluate GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot or other non-Google crawlers. AI Crawler Check evaluates 265 of them against the same file.

Does blocking Google-Extended show up in Search Console?

Google-Extended is a robots.txt token rather than a separate crawler, so there are no fetches to report. Our check shows whether your file gives Google-Extended its own rules and what they resolve to.

Can I use AI Crawler Check on a site I do not own?

Yes. It only needs a public URL, which is why agencies use it before they have Search Console access to a prospect's property.

See where your site actually stands

Free check against 265 AI crawlers. No sign-up, nothing to install.