Of 76,371 live New Zealand websites, 3,150 (4.12%) block an AI crawler — but a remarkable 15% have consciously published an AI policy file, one of the highest rates on Earth.
Analysis of 41,818,678 live, content-validated websites worldwide · snapshot 2026-07-13 · by Piperic
New Zealand's web is small but strikingly self-aware. Of 76,371 live sites, 4.12% block an AI crawler (23rd of 43), yet an extraordinary 15.3% have consciously opted in with a policy file — and 15.66% publish llms.txt, among the very highest rates anywhere in this report, ahead of Australia and most of Europe.
Kiwi newsrooms are moderately defensive at 15.7% — well below Australia's 25% across the Tasman, but far above the national average. The most-blocked sector is attractions (9.1%), the familiar tourism reflex of a country that markets itself to the world. Sport follows at 5.57%.
And New Zealand blocks precisely: just 4.7% of GPTBot-blockers accidentally shut out ChatGPT Search, below the global 6.1%. For a web this size, the combination of world-leading llms.txt adoption and low accidental self-harm is a standout — New Zealand has thought about AI more than almost anyone.
Share of sites blocking at least one AI crawler — lower = more open. New Zealand ranks #23 of 44 countries analysed.
Neighbours shown for context. Full ranking in the data download.
Every website falls into one of four groups, based on what it blocks and what it declares:
2,890 New Zealand websites block GPTBot to keep their content out of AI training. But 136 of them — 4.7% — ALSO block OAI-SearchBot, most likely by accident. Those sites have removed themselves from ChatGPT Search results entirely: protected from training, but invisible where their customers now search.
GPTBot (training) and OAI-SearchBot (ChatGPT Search) are independent robots.txt tokens — blocking one does not block the other.
Share of New Zealand sites blocking each crawler in robots.txt.
Bytespider is ByteDance's (TikTok) crawler — it ignores robots.txt more often than the majors, yet it is among the most-blocked.
AI-blocking and llms.txt adoption across New Zealand's biggest website categories.
| Sector | Sites | Blocks AI | llms.txt |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📰 News & media | 223 | 15.7% | 1.79% |
| business and finance | 15,139 | 3.87% | 9.08% |
| home and garden | 7,315 | 3.19% | 14.2% |
| technology and computing | 4,736 | 4.69% | 8.74% |
| attractions | 3,704 | 9.1% | 5.99% |
| sports | 3,663 | 5.57% | 19.03% |
| automotive | 3,379 | 3.37% | 17.25% |
| style and fashion | 3,344 | 1.53% | 52.45% |
| personal finance | 3,210 | 3.93% | 13.64% |
| medical health | 3,063 | 3.72% | 9.73% |
| travel | 2,996 | 4.37% | 9.95% |
| hobbies and interests | 2,948 | 3.36% | 19.61% |
New Zealand news sites block AI 3.8× more often than the national average (15.7% vs 4.12%) — publishers are the most defensive segment of the web.
21,948 New Zealand online shops are open to AI crawlers (97.1% of 22,606). Their product content can already be read, compared and recommended by AI assistants — whether they know it or not.
Share of sites blocking at least one AI bot, by platform:
This is the baseline edition (2026-07-13). Piperic re-measures continuously; the next edition will show how fast New Zealand's web is closing — or opening.
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How to cite: “According to Piperic's AI Access Report (2026-07-13), based on 76,371 live New Zealand websites…” — link to this page.
Download the country dataset (JSON) Global rankings dataset
Sample: 76,371 live, content-validated websites (New Zealand, ccTLD-based assignment), out of 41,818,678 live domains analysed worldwide. “Live” = HTTP 200 and not parked. “Blocks AI” = the site's robots.txt disallows at least one of 14 known AI crawlers. llms.txt/ai.txt = the file exists at the site root. Snapshot: 2026-07-13 (frozen — numbers do not move with the live crawl). Full-web note: these figures cover the ENTIRE live web including the long tail; industry headlines like “25% of top sites block GPTBot” measure only large publishers — both are true, they measure different things. Country assignment via ccTLD under-counts .com/.org sites; treat US figures as indicative.
Press contact: press@piperic.com · Data: Piperic Business Intelligence
Every number on this page is reproducible from the public dataset above.