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# ====================================================================
#  BOARDINGAREA NETWORK  |  CRAWLER ACCESS POLICY
#  Policy version : BA-3.1
#  Property       : thebulkheadseat.com
#  Issued         : 2026-08-27   |   Reviewed quarterly, network-wide
# --------------------------------------------------------------------
#  This file is the machine-readable statement of BoardingArea's
#  crawler access policy for this property. Every directive below
#  is intentional, and so is every omission: under RFC 9309, a
#  crawler with no matching group receives full access. Where this
#  policy grants access, it does so by documented omission, because
#  a per-bot "Allow" group would exempt that crawler from the
#  hygiene rules in Section 1 (a crawler obeys only its most
#  specific matching group). Grants of access in this file are
#  therefore expressed in the strongest form robots.txt provides.
#
#  POLICY SUMMARY
#   S1  Traditional search engines .. FULL ACCESS (hygiene rules only)
#   S2  AI search & answer services . FULL ACCESS, granted deliberately
#   S3  AI model-training crawlers . ACCESS WITHDRAWN, license required
#   S4  Property-specific rules ..... maintained by this publisher
#   S5  Sitemaps .................... verified working 2026-08-27
#
#  RIGHTS NOTICE: all rights in this property's content are
#  reserved, including under Article 4 of EU Directive 2019/790
#  (text and data mining). Use of this content to train generative
#  AI models is prohibited without a written license from
#  BoardingArea. Compliance is monitored; enforcement against
#  non-compliant crawlers is implemented at the network edge.
#
# ====================================================================

# --- S1 - GENERAL CRAWLERS: hygiene rules ---------------------------
# Applies to every crawler without a more specific group below.
User-agent: *
# WordPress admin is excluded; admin-ajax stays open so pages render.
Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php
Disallow: /wp-admin/
# Draft previews, comment-reply permalinks, trackbacks and comment
# feeds: thin, duplicative, or private-by-intent URLs.
Disallow: /*?preview=true
Disallow: /*?replytocom=
Disallow: /*/trackback/
Disallow: /comments/feed/
Disallow: /wp-comments-post.php
# Internal search results are excluded per Google's crawl-budget
# guidance: search URLs generate unbounded, low-value near-duplicate
# pages that consume crawl capacity better spent on articles.
# wordpress.org applies these same exclusions to its own properties.
Disallow: /?s=
Disallow: /*?s=
Disallow: /search/
Disallow: /*/search/

# --- S2 - AI SEARCH & ANSWER SERVICES: full access, by decision -----
# The services below index and cite this property's content,
# referring readers to the source. Travel is the most-cited
# category in AI answers, and this network elects to remain fully
# visible in them. Per RFC 9309 their access is granted by omission
# (see header): no group naming them appears in this file, and that
# is the policy, not an oversight.
#   Granted: OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User (OpenAI); PerplexityBot,
#   Perplexity-User; Claude-SearchBot, Claude-User (Anthropic);
#   DuckAssistBot (DuckDuckGo); Google-Extended (governs grounding
#   of Gemini answers; per Google's documentation it has no effect
#   on Search ranking in either direction); Googlebot; Bingbot;
#   Applebot.

# --- S3 - AI MODEL-TRAINING CRAWLERS: access withdrawn --------------
# The crawlers below collect content to train generative AI models.
# That use is declined network-wide: it returns no reader, no
# citation, and no compensation to the publisher. This withdrawal
# is reversible by policy revision, and it does not affect this
# property's presence in any search engine or AI answer service
# (see S2).
User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: ClaudeBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: Applebot-Extended
Disallow: /

User-agent: Meta-ExternalAgent
Disallow: /

User-agent: CCBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: Bytespider
Disallow: /

User-agent: cohere-ai
Disallow: /

User-agent: cohere-training-data-crawler
Disallow: /

User-agent: Diffbot
Disallow: /

User-agent: omgili
Disallow: /

# --- S5 - SITEMAPS: each URL verified live 2026-08-27 ---------------
Sitemap: https://thebulkheadseat.com/sitemap_index.xml

# ====================================================================
#  BoardingArea Crawler Access Policy BA-3.1 | issued 2026-08-27
#  This file is programmatically audited; deviations from issued
#  policy are detected and reconciled by the network's scheduled
#  robots.txt audit.
# ====================================================================