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03 · EdgeQ1Nov 6, 2026

Bot defenses turned away a test shopping agent at 29 of 200 retailers

An agency audit of 200 US and UK retailers found 29 answered a self-identified test shopping agent with an error, a challenge or a blank page, while most of those stores’ robots.txt files welcome the major AI crawlers, so the block came from security settings rather than any published policy.

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Source: PPC Land, Nov 5, 2026 · Bot protection blocks Blend’s AI shopping agent at 29 of 200 retailers ↗
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