Of 1,089,712 live Russian websites — over a million, one of the largest samples here — only 20,132 (1.85%) block an AI crawler. And 96% neither block nor declare anything: the highest 'silence' rate in the entire report.
Analysis of 41,818,678 live, content-validated websites worldwide · snapshot 2026-07-13 · by Piperic
The Russian-language web is vast and, on this measure, wide open. Of 1,089,712 live .ru sites — one of the largest samples in this report — only 1.85% block an AI crawler, making Russia the 5th most open of 43 countries, alongside Germany and Austria at the top of the table.
But Russia's openness is pure inertia. 96.25% of Russian sites are 'open by silence' — neither blocking AI nor declaring any policy — the highest silence rate in the entire report. Conscious opt-in (1.9%) and llms.txt adoption (1.93%) are among the lowest measured anywhere. The Russian web hasn't decided to welcome AI; it has simply never considered the question.
Even the press stays open: Russian news sites block AI at just 4.02%, a fraction of the Western newsroom norm. The most-blocked sector is attractions (4.89%). Russia is the clearest example in this report of an internet that is maximally exposed to AI without any deliberate choice behind it.
Share of sites blocking at least one AI crawler — lower = more open. Russia ranks #5 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:
15,780 Russia websites block GPTBot to keep their content out of AI training. But 781 of them — 4.9% — 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 Russia 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 Russia's biggest website categories.
| Sector | Sites | Blocks AI | llms.txt |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📰 News & media | 7,218 | 4.02% | 4.56% |
| business and finance | 216,053 | 1.11% | 1.92% |
| home and garden | 119,517 | 1.15% | 2.08% |
| technology and computing | 91,796 | 2.22% | 2.83% |
| attractions | 68,465 | 4.89% | 0.56% |
| automotive | 64,075 | 1.96% | 1.88% |
| medical health | 49,115 | 1.09% | 2.08% |
| style and fashion | 44,267 | 2.2% | 1.83% |
| real estate | 36,899 | 1.06% | 1.66% |
| shopping | 36,090 | 1.2% | 1.35% |
| hobbies and interests | 31,773 | 0.86% | 1.92% |
| personal finance | 29,157 | 2.04% | 1.87% |
Russia news sites block AI 2.2× more often than the national average (4.02% vs 1.85%) — publishers are the most defensive segment of the web.
107,721 Russia online shops are open to AI crawlers (98.2% of 109,696). 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 Russia'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 1,089,712 live Russia websites…” — link to this page.
Download the country dataset (JSON) Global rankings dataset
Sample: 1,089,712 live, content-validated websites (Russia, 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.