AI Site Grade
bornfree.org.uk — AI Site Grade
Born Free Foundation's bare domain blocks human visitors while serving AI crawlers, creating a split-index risk and hiding critical content from browsers.
The site's Cloudflare WAF blocks human traffic on the bare domain and key pages, while AI crawlers get full access, and the lack of sitemap, llms.txt, and AI bot robots.txt rules limits discoverability.
- Findings
- 11
- Evidence checks
- 40
- Completed
- 30 May 2026
Analysis
Born Free Foundation — AI-Visibility Audit
The bare domain (bornfree.org.uk) returns 403 Forbidden to browser UAs while serving full 104KB pages to most AI crawlers — a Cloudflare WAF rule is actively discriminating against human visitors on the non-www variant, creating a split-index risk where Google's crawler (Google-Extended gets 200) indexes a different version than what users see.
Crawler Access
robots.txt contains only a generic User-agent: * rule disallowing /wp-admin/ and makes no mention of any AI bot — no GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, or Google-Extended rules exist. The llms.txt endpoint returns 403 Forbidden even to AI bots (GPTBot gets 429). The sitemap.xml is also 403-blocked on both www and bare domain, meaning search engines and AI crawlers have no structured content map. Despite this, compare_bot_access shows that OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, Google-Extended, PerplexityBot, Perplexity-User, Applebot-Extended, and anthropic-ai all receive 200 responses with full content on the www variant. ClaudeBot and GPTBot are inconsistently rate-limited (429) on some pages but 200 on others. Bytespider is the only bot consistently blocked (403) across all pages.
Content & Schema Posture
The site runs on WordPress (evident from /wp-admin/ in robots.txt and wp-content URL patterns) behind Cloudflare (nginx server header, cf-ray headers). Every page carries consistent WebSite, WebPage, BreadcrumbList, and Organization JSON-LD schema with logo, search action, and publisher references — a solid baseline. However, no FAQPage, Article, NewsArticle, HowTo, Product, or ItemList schema exists on any page examined. The news listing page (/news-updates/) has 176 pages of articles with rich filtering (by species, theme, field of work) but individual article pages return 403 to browser UAs while serving full content to AI bots — a bizarre inversion. The adoption page lists 13 animal species but uses no Product or Service schema for the adoption programme.
Cold-Knowledge Gap
The LLM knows Born Free's founding story (Bill Travers, Virginia McKenna, the 1966 film *Born Free*), the Christian the lion story, sanctuaries in Kenya and Ethiopia, and the "Zoo Check" campaign. The site itself confirms these facts but adds substantial detail the model lacks: the Pole Pole elephant story (the actual catalyst for the charity's founding in 1984), the Pangea elephant sanctuary project, the #TankFree campaign against dolphinaria, the Raise The Red Flag reporting tool, and the Shamwari big cat sanctuary in South Africa. The model also does not know about Virginia McKenna retiring as Trustee in March 2026 — a recent, notable governance change. The site's news section is remarkably current, with articles dated May 2026, suggesting active publishing that the model's training cutoff misses entirely.
External Signals
The site carries a Fundraising Regulator validation badge (UK charity compliance). External search results for the charity are surprisingly sparse — no recent press, reviews, or Reddit threads surfaced. The charity's social footprint (Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok) is linked from every page footer but the search engine returns zero indexed external mentions, which may indicate a broader discoverability problem beyond the site itself.
Structural Anomalies
The bare domain vs www split is the most consequential finding. bornfree.org.uk 403s browser traffic while www.bornfree.org.uk works normally — but the canonical tag on all pages points to https://www.bornfree.org.uk/, which is correct. The /news/ path redirects to /news-updates/ but individual article URLs under that path are browser-blocked. The /blog/, /rescue/, /captive-animals/, /pangea/, /conservation-communities/, and /raise-the-red-flag/ paths all intermittently return 403 to browser UAs while serving full content to AI bots — a Cloudflare WAF rate-limiting pattern that creates an inconsistent crawl experience.
Findings
Bare domain returns 403 to browsers but 200 to AI crawlers High
The non-www variant (bornfree.org.uk) returns 403 Forbidden to browser user agents while serving full content to most AI crawlers, creating a split-index risk where Google indexes a different version than users see.
What to change: Configure Cloudflare WAF to allow browser traffic on the bare domain or redirect it permanently to the www variant.
Sitemap.xml returns 403 to all crawlers High
The sitemap.xml is blocked by Cloudflare on both www and bare domain, preventing search engines and AI crawlers from discovering the site's content structure.
What to change: Allow access to sitemap.xml from all crawlers by adjusting Cloudflare WAF rules.
llms.txt endpoint returns 403/429 to AI bots High
The llms.txt file is inaccessible to AI crawlers (GPTBot gets 429), preventing LLMs from discovering the site's intended AI-facing content.
What to change: Create and serve an llms.txt file with a curated list of AI-relevant pages, and ensure it is accessible to all AI crawlers.
Robots.txt lacks rules for AI crawlers Medium
The robots.txt file only contains a generic User-agent: * rule disallowing /wp-admin/ and does not specify any directives for GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, or other AI crawlers.
What to change: Add explicit allow/disallow rules for major AI crawlers in robots.txt to control their access.
Multiple key pages return 403 to browser UAs High
Pages like /news/, /blog/, /rescue/, /captive-animals/, /pangea/, /conservation-communities/, and /raise-the-red-flag/ intermittently return 403 to browser user agents while serving full content to AI crawlers, creating an inconsistent user experience and potential SEO issues.
What to change: Review Cloudflare WAF rate-limiting rules to allow consistent browser access to these pages.
Individual news article URLs return 403 to browsers High
Article URLs under /news-updates/ return 403 to browser UAs while serving full content to AI bots, hiding recent content from human visitors.
What to change: Allow browser access to individual news article pages by adjusting Cloudflare WAF rules.
No Article or NewsArticle schema on news pages Medium
The news listing and individual article pages lack Article or NewsArticle JSON-LD schema, reducing their visibility in AI-generated answers and search results.
What to change: Add Article or NewsArticle schema markup to all news pages with headline, datePublished, author, and image fields.
Adoption page lacks Product or Service schema Medium
The adoption page lists 13 animal species but uses no Product or Service schema, missing an opportunity to appear in AI-driven recommendations.
What to change: Add Product or Service schema to each adoption option with name, description, price, and availability.
No FAQPage schema on any page Low
Despite the site containing FAQ-like content, no FAQPage schema was detected, limiting eligibility for rich results.
What to change: Identify pages with question-answer content and add FAQPage schema markup.
LLM knowledge lacks key charity details Medium
The LLM does not know about the Pole Pole elephant story, Pangea sanctuary, #TankFree campaign, Raise The Red Flag tool, Shamwari sanctuary, or Virginia McKenna's retirement in March 2026, which are all present on the site.
What to change: Ensure these stories are prominently featured on crawlable pages and consider adding them to an llms.txt file.
Low external search visibility and backlinks Medium
Web searches for the charity returned zero indexed results from news, reviews, or social media, indicating poor off-site discoverability.
What to change: Invest in PR, backlink building, and social media engagement to increase external mentions.
What's working
- Consistent WebSite, WebPage, BreadcrumbList, and Organization schema — Every page carries proper JSON-LD schema for WebSite, WebPage, BreadcrumbList, and Organization with logo, search action, and publisher references, providing a solid structured data baseline.
- Major AI crawlers receive full content on www variant — OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, Google-Extended, PerplexityBot, Perplexity-User, Applebot-Extended, and anthropic-ai all receive 200 responses with full page content on the www variant, ensuring AI visibility for most bots.
- Active news section with recent articles — The news section contains articles dated as recently as May 2026, demonstrating active content publishing that keeps the site fresh.
- Fundraising Regulator validation badge present — The site displays a Fundraising Regulator badge, indicating compliance with UK charity fundraising standards and building trust.
- Social media links present in footer — Links to Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and TikTok are included in the footer, providing pathways for social engagement.
- Canonical tag correctly points to www variant — All pages use a canonical tag pointing to https://www.bornfree.org.uk/, which is the accessible version, mitigating duplicate content issues.
Track bornfree.org.uk across AI search
This is one snapshot. Open the interactive report to inspect evidence, or grade another site free.