AI Opt-Out Signals

What this parameter measures

Does your site carry explicit AI opt-out directives? friendly4AI inspects three places: the X-Robots-Tag response header and the page's <meta name="robots"> tag for the AI-specific directives noai and noimageai, and robots.txt for site-wide AI exclusion — five or more tracked AI crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, Applebot-Extended, CCBot, Bytespider, and others) blocked by Disallow: /, or a wildcard Disallow: / under User-agent: *. It reports whether any of these opt-out conditions is present.

Why it matters for AI-readiness

This parameter is informational and is excluded from the AI-Readiness Score. It reports a signal; it does not raise or lower your score. Opting out of AI usage is a legitimate business choice, common for media, legal, and enterprise sites, and friendly4AI surfaces it rather than penalizing it. The signal matters because it explains intent: if a site deliberately carries noai or blocks the major AI crawlers, a low Crawlability result is the expected outcome of that policy, not a misconfiguration to fix. Reading this parameter alongside the scored access checks tells you whether restricted AI access is on purpose.

How we score it

Under the v4.4 methodology, this is a binary, informational check that does not contribute to the numeric score. friendly4AI marks an opt-out as detected (the fail band) when any one of three conditions holds: noai or noimageai appears in the X-Robots-Tag header or the meta robots tag; five or more tracked AI crawlers are blocked by Disallow: / in robots.txt; or a wildcard Disallow: / blocks User-agent: *. If none of these holds, the result is no opt-out detected (the pass band). There is no partial tier — the borderline is whether at least one opt-out condition is met. Because the parameter is excluded from scoring, neither outcome moves your AI-Readiness Score.

How to fix common issues

• If your low access score is unexpected, check for a stray noai or noimageai in your X-Robots-Tag header or meta robots tag and remove it if you want AI access.
• Review robots.txt for a wildcard Disallow: / or per-bot Disallow: / rules across many AI crawlers — these trigger the opt-out signal.
• If the opt-out is intentional, no action is needed; this parameter confirms your restrictions are working as designed.
• Pair this signal with AI Crawler Access Control and robots.txt Accessibility to see exactly which engines your policy reaches.
• Re-scan after editing headers or robots.txt to confirm the opt-out state matches your intent.