CrawlCheck

Directory · Data, labeling and synthetic data

Scale AI — what a crawler receives from scale.com

Website measurement, not a product review. This page records what machine clients received from scale.com. It does not evaluate Scale AI software, features, pricing or support.

79
Cgrade

Answer engines can reach and read this site. It needs more it can quote.

AI visibility 79/100, measured 2026-10-12 16:10 UTC from outside its network, as each named AI and search crawler and as a browser. An engine can reach and read this site. What is left is giving it something specific to say.

Held at C A medium-severity finding sets the letter.

Open the full report scale.com ↗

8

findings

✗

llms.txt on its host

✗

entity map on its host

6

scans on record since 2026-09-18

The three stages, in the order an engine hits a site

Each stage gates the next. An engine that cannot reach a page never reads it; one that cannot read it never quotes it. That is why reach is a ceiling and not just a weight.

95

Stage 1 · 40% of the score

Reach

Can a named answer-engine crawler get your pages at all?

Every named crawler was served the same page a browser gets.

76

Stage 2 · 30% of the score

Read

Once it has the bytes, can it find the words?

The content is buried in markup, or the files that guide a crawler are missing.

61

Stage 3 · 30% of the score

Quote

Is there a specific fact it can state and attribute?

An assistant would have to paraphrase your page instead of quoting a fact.

The stage to fix first is quote, because the three run in order.

What to fix

8 findings on this site, 2 of them scored serious. Every one is named below; the top one is shown in full, free. What we saw, why each matters, how to fix it and the bytes behind it are what a licence buys — or we implement the whole list for you.

2 Medium 3 Low 3 Note

1robots.txt rules do not apply to named agents4 named User-agent groups (4 agents) do not repeat 3 of the Disallow rules the `*` group carries. A crawler obeys only its own most-specific group and ignores `MediumSetting

What we saw

4 named User-agent groups (4 agents) do not repeat 3 of the Disallow rules the `*` group carries. A crawler obeys only its own most-specific group and ignores `*` entirely, so those rules do not apply to any of the named agents (some declare their own, different rules). Worst group: `twitterbot` bypasses /*?*utm_source=*, /*?*_hstc=*, /*?*. /robots.txt

Why it matters

A crawler reads only the User-agent group that matches it best and ignores every other group, including `*`. Naming an agent and giving it only `Allow: /` therefore deletes all of your `*` Disallow rules for that agent. The file still parses and the agent still reaches your homepage, so this is invisible on inspection — but the paths you meant to keep out of search are open, and search engines will crawl and may index them.

How to fix it

Every User-agent group that names a crawler must repeat the Disallow rules you want applied. A named group with no rules means 'allow everything' for that crawler.

Setting: a setting on the server, CDN, DNS or a plugin — no code and no writing

On Next.js (detected)

  1. App Router: add app/robots.ts that returns a MetadataRoute.Robots object (rules per userAgent, sitemap URL). Pages Router or static export: put robots.txt in public/.
  2. Ship one of the two, not both: the route handler and a public/robots.txt collide.

All Next.js fixes

Why this was decided
RuleROBOTS_RULES_SHADOWED · rule pack sv31 · scope core
Evaluated2026-10-12 16:10:18 UTC
Decisiond1:e673f05aed88882e8c5b · finding f1:bbc1225a792e82f5fd8c resolve either at /api/graph/<id> with a key
Observercrawlcheck-worker build a0b27a0e · audit v4

What it rests on

IdentityStatusBytessha256Kept
read: /robots.txt2007,94647bc2b6b2a7aalready_held

21 more in the manifest.

Artifacts: manifest:87533122443a5f31a8fde26dae1dd1ef4d6fc74aa47af946bbc9126a8e31c2fc

Grade effect Caps the letter at C together with 1 other medium-severity finding; the letter rises only when all of them are gone. Moves no points.

Rule ROBOTS_RULES_SHADOWED under scoring rules v31 · fingerprint ROBOTS_RULES_SHADOWED|/robots.txt · persisting (6 scans)

Verify the fix Re-scan after the change. This finding is cleared when ROBOTS_RULES_SHADOWED is no longer reported at /robots.txt; if it comes back after clearing, it is marked a regression, not a new finding.

ROBOTS_RULES_SHADOWED · full transcript

2Almost nothing a machine receives from this page is readable text🔒 What we saw, why it matters, the fix and the evidence bytes are in the licensed report.Medium
3The sitemap does not say when anything changed/sitemap.xml🔒 What we saw, why it matters, the fix and the evidence bytes are in the licensed report.Low
4robots.txt keeps Google's image crawler off the site's images/_next/image🔒 What we saw, why it matters, the fix and the evidence bytes are in the licensed report.Low
5A sitemap answers 200 and lists nothing/blog/author/sitemap.xml🔒 What we saw, why it matters, the fix and the evidence bytes are in the licensed report.Low
6Images are not the format their file names say🔒 What we saw, why it matters, the fix and the evidence bytes are in the licensed report.Note
7No llms.txt/llms.txt🔒 What we saw, why it matters, the fix and the evidence bytes are in the licensed report.Note
8A missing agent file answers with a full page🔒 What we saw, why it matters, the fix and the evidence bytes are in the licensed report.Note

Open the other 7

What we saw, why it matters, how to fix it, and the evidence bytes for every finding — on this report and every re-scan. From $29 a month.

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The chain a crawler follows

The chain breaks at llms.txt. Everything after that point is only reachable by a crawler guessing the conventional path.

✓robots.txtEvery crawler reads this first
✓sitemapNamed in robots.txt and resolves
✗llms.txtPoints onward, links stay on this host
✗entity graphParses as JSON and points home

A machine file that does not parse is worth less than one that is absent, because it looks present. Rows behind this.

Where the bytes go

Of the 427,015 decompressed bytes the homepage delivers, 1.6% is text a reader or a model can actually use. Most of what a crawler downloads here is not words.

  • Readable text 1.6% · 6,638 B
  • Markup & attributes 72.5% · 309,463 B
  • Structured data (JSON-LD) 0.1% · 214 B
  • Inline CSS 0.1% · 230 B
  • Inline JavaScript 21.7% · 92,576 B
  • Inline SVG 4.2% · 17,735 B
  • HTML comments 0% · 159 B

The individual blocks that weigh the most, so the fix is a search rather than a hunt:

  • Inline JavaScript · 34,719 B (8.1%) — unnamedopens self.__next_f.push([1,"25:I[920565,[\"/_next/static/immutable/chunks/4
  • Inline JavaScript · 19,259 B (4.5%) — unnamedopens self.__next_f.push([1,"e:I[507085,[\"/_next/static/immutable/chunks/44
  • Inline JavaScript · 14,686 B (3.4%) — unnamedopens self.__next_f.push([1,"15:I[339756,[\"/_next/static/immutable/chunks/4
  • Inline JavaScript · 12,735 B (3%) — unnamedopens self.__next_f.push([1,"1:\"$Sreact.fragment\"\n4:I[897367,[\"/_next/st
  • Inline JavaScript · 8,235 B (1.9%) — unnamedopens self.__next_f.push([1,"1d:I[677838,[\"/_next/static/immutable/chunks/4

What changed

  1. 2026-10-12homepage images stopped matching their file namesappeared
  2. 2026-10-12robots.txt began keeping Googlebot-Image off homepage imagesappeared
  3. 2026-10-04a declared sitemap listed no URLsappeared

6 scans on record, first 2026-09-18. Score movements are shown only between readings taken under the same score version; finding codes are comparable across all of them.

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