How to block AI crawlers from your Squarespace author website
A super quick video for you today to show you how to stop AI crawlers from using the content on your author website to train their language models. Check it out below.
What are AI crawlers?
AI crawlers are used by AI companies to train their large language models (LLMs). These models learn from the content of websites they scan, and use the data to improve the accuracy and general capabilities of their AI models.
As authors, I don’t think we should be encouraging AI models to improve their language skills off the back of our hard work.
I think this is especially important if you have a blog, or extracts from your novels on your website.
If you agree, follow the steps in the video below to block them from accessing your Squarespace author website. Luckily, it’s very easy and quick.
How to block AI crawlers from your Squarespace author website
Prefer written instructions?
Here you go:
1) Log into the back-end of your Squarespace author website
2) Click on Settings on the left-hand side
3) Click on Website
4) Scroll down and click on Crawlers
5) Toggle off the switch (so that it goes grey, not green) next to Artificial Intelligence Crawlers (the second option in the list)
6) Click on Save in the top-right corner
That’s it! Super simple.
NB: Make sure you don’t turn off the option for Search Engine Crawlers as this will prevent search engines like Google from finding and indexing your website, and will mean it doesn’t appear in their results when people search for you.
Website not hosted on Squarespace?
Unfortunately at present there’s not an easy way to block AI crawlers on other platforms such as Wix, Weebly or Wordpress, but hopefully this is something they will introduce soon.
Read more info on AI crawlers on Squarespace’s own website →
