AI Scraper Checklist

Start with the signals that are visible on every important page. Confirm that the title is accurate, the meta description describes the page, the canonical URL points to the preferred source, and the footer includes a current copyright or license notice. These signals help crawlers and humans understand what the page is and where the original version lives.

Next, look for attribution language. Does the page or site explain how people should quote, summarize, or cite the content? If not, add a short statement. For example, you can ask summaries, answer engines, and republishers to include a visible link to the original URL. This is simple, but it removes ambiguity.

Check whether /robots.txt exists and whether it reflects your current crawl preferences. A missing file is not automatically a crisis, but adding one gives crawlers a standard place to look. Include a sitemap when possible. Avoid copying complex crawler-specific rules unless you understand what they do.

Check whether /llms.txt exists. If not, generate a starter file. It should describe allowed summaries, acceptable short excerpts, preferred attribution, disallowed full republication, and a contact path for permission requests. Keep it short enough that you can maintain it.

Your CMS template should reinforce your policy automatically. Article pages should show author or organization identity, publication dates, canonical links, and a stable source URL. Documentation pages should make the project name and version clear. Course pages should distinguish free public excerpts from restricted lessons.

If your site has multiple content types, do not assume one policy line covers everything. Blog posts, API docs, research reports, and paid resources may need slightly different attribution notes. The goal is consistency within each content type, not a giant policy that tries to describe every possible scenario.

Schedule a monthly review. Test a few representative URLs, check whether robots.txt and llms.txt still load, and confirm that canonical tags still appear after theme or CMS changes. If you add a new content section, update your policy text so it includes that section.

Keep a simple change log for policy updates. Note when you added llms.txt, changed crawler guidance, updated citation language, or revised licensing. This record helps future you remember why a decision was made and gives collaborators a stable reference.

If your checklist finds many gaps, start with the items that affect every page. A theme-level canonical tag, footer copyright line, and linked attribution policy can improve hundreds of URLs at once. Next, publish robots.txt and llms.txt at the root domain so crawlers have predictable files to check. Finally, improve special templates such as research pages, course previews, or documentation pages that need more precise citation context.

Avoid spending the first week tuning edge cases while the main site still lacks basic signals. The goal of this checklist is momentum: find the public gaps, fix the broadest ones, and create a repeatable review process. Once the site has a clean baseline, future monthly checks become quick maintenance rather than a full policy rewrite.

Even on a small site, assign ownership for the checklist. The technical owner confirms that public files, headers, and metadata are discoverable. The editorial owner confirms that attribution wording matches the real publishing policy. The SEO owner, if there is one, checks whether crawler rules support search visibility. One person can hold all three roles, but the responsibilities should be clear.

A checklist without ownership quickly becomes a document nobody trusts. Add it to launch reviews, redesign reviews, and content migration plans. When a new template ships, run the checklist once before publishing many pages with the same mistake. That habit is more valuable than a perfect policy written once and forgotten.

For a monthly pass, keep the review small. Test the homepage, one article, one evergreen page, one commercial page, and one newly published page. If those five URLs look healthy, you probably have a stable baseline. If they show repeated gaps, fix the shared template before checking dozens of individual URLs.