AI crawler settings on Squarespace, Wix and Shopify: where they hide and what they do

The problem

Why your builder's defaults matter

Generic AEO advice assumes you can open a robots.txt file and edit it. On a site builder, that file is generated for you, and the controls live behind different menus with different names.

The stakes are simple: if the AI search crawlers cannot read your pages, the engines cannot cite them in answers, and a setting ticked years ago (or by a designer you no longer work with) can quietly decide that for you. The reverse also matters too: an opt-out only works if you know which bots your builder’s toggle actually covers. What follows is each platform’s own documentation, checked on 21 August 2026, with the gaps named.

Wix

Wix: no toggle, just the robots.txt editor

SEO & GEO in your site’s dashboard, scroll to Tools and settings, then Robots.txt Editor.

Wix has no one-click AI switch. Its official guidance on blocking AI crawlers is to add directives yourself in the editor, for example a user-agent line naming the bot and a disallow rule Wix. Wix’s article names CCBot, GPTBot, ChatGPT-User and BingAI as examples, and carries the same honesty as Squarespace’s: “some crawlers may ignore these directives”. By default a Wix site ships no AI-specific directives, which in practice means AI crawlers are not asked to stay away until you add the rules Wix.

One caution from the trade: the robots.txt editor edits your live file immediately, and a stray rule can block ordinary search crawlers too. Change only the user-agents you mean to change, and run the check below straight afterwards.

Know the bots

Which bot does what

The bots split into three jobs, and mixing them up is how sites opt out of the wrong thing.

Search crawlers decide whether an engine can cite you: OpenAI’s OAI-SearchBot “is used to surface websites in search results in ChatGPT’s search features” OpenAI, and Claude-SearchBot and PerplexityBot do the same jobs for their engines Anthropic. Training crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, CCBot) gather model training data; blocking them is a rights decision that does not remove you from live search answers. User-triggered fetchers act when a person asks: Anthropic says all its bots, Claude-User included, honour robots.txt, while Perplexity says plainly that Perplexity-User “generally ignores robots.txt rules” because a user requested the fetch Perplexity. Full explanations live in the glossary.

FAQ

Builder settings, asked directly

>Does Squarespace's AI block remove me from ChatGPT?

Not fully, and that cuts both ways. The checkbox writes robots.txt rules for a named list including GPTBot, ClaudeBot, CCBot and Google-Extended, but the list does not include OAI-SearchBot or ChatGPT-User, so ChatGPT search can still read and cite your site. Squarespace itself notes that requesting exclusion doesn't guarantee crawlers will comply.

>Do I need a paid Wix plan to edit robots.txt?

Wix's help article on blocking AI crawlers describes the Robots.txt Editor without listing a plan requirement. If you cannot see SEO & GEO, then Tools and settings, then Robots.txt Editor in your dashboard, check your site permissions first.

>Will Shopify support help me edit robots.txt.liquid?

No. Shopify's documentation is direct about this: robots.txt.liquid edits are an unsupported customisation, and Shopify Support cannot help with them. The template mechanism is documented and stable, but you make changes at your own risk, so keep the edit minimal and test after publishing.

>My builder isn't listed. What now?

Run the live check below first: it reads your robots.txt and fetches your homepage as each AI crawler, which tells you whether anything is blocked before you go hunting for a setting. Most builders publish a robots.txt or AI-crawler help article; search the builder's support site for robots.txt.