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18Module
AI optimization for Squarespace websites. Settings and strategies specific to the Squarespace platform.
Available3 lessons18 min
Squarespace has no robots.txt editor. It offers one checkbox, in Settings under Crawlers, that adds twenty-three AI crawlers to the file including GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended, Amazonbot and Applebot-Extended; it is off by default, deliberately, and Squarespace states that there is currently no universal way to be excluded from training while still being featured by the same company's assistant, so the precise per-agent policy this course argues for is bounded by what each operator publishes. Three separate controls stop a page being found and they reach different distances: hiding a page from search results and blocking crawlers site-wide are requests that leave the page openable by anybody with the address, while a password is the only one that is access control; an unlinked page is a public URL that happens not to be in a menu. With the template fixed, the work is writing: add one short answer block directly under the page heading so the passage first in the source is the answer rather than an image caption, write the author, the date and the source into the content because no template setting can then withhold them, write excerpts separately so summary blocks do not copy your opening paragraph onto four pages, and use code injection last, to describe what the page already says.
Squarespace is the most closed of the platforms here, and it is also the most candid about it. There is no robots.txt editor, one checkbox covers twenty-three AI crawlers, and the documentation says plainly that you cannot ask to be left out of training while still appearing in the same company's assistant.
Which makes this the module where the argument for a precise crawler policy meets its limit, and where the work moves almost entirely into the words: one answer block under the heading, the provenance the template does not print, and the excerpt quietly copied onto four pages.