ptsb.ie — AI Site Grade

Analysis

ptsb.ie: A Consumer Banking Site That Does Not Exist for AI Crawlers

Every single AI crawler — GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, OAI-SearchBot, Bytespider, Applebot-Extended, and ChatGPT-User — receives a blanket 403 from Akamai (edgesuite.net) on every URL under ptsb.ie, permanenttsb.ie, and www.permanenttsb.ie. The robots.txt, llms.txt, and sitemap.xml all return the same Akamai Access Denied page. The consumer banking site is entirely invisible to automated agents.

Crawler Access

The domain ptsb.ie resolves to Akamai edge servers (CNAME via ptsb.ie.edgekey.net) and returns 403 for every user-agent tested — browser, GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended, PerplexityBot, and all others. No UA-based differentiation exists; the block is absolute. The corporate investor site at permanenttsbgroup.ie (Cloudflare-hosted) is fully accessible to all bots with 200 responses, but it contains only thin corporate boilerplate (~130 words on the homepage) and no product content. The corporate robots.txt does not mention any AI crawler by name — it blocks AhrefsBot and a set of Java/1.6 crawlers, then allows * broadly.

Cold-Knowledge Gap

The LLM prior on PTSB is surprisingly detailed: it knows the bank's history (merger of Permanent Building Society and TSB Bank), the 2008 bailout, the 2023 Ulster Bank loan acquisition, the Explore current account with cashback, and even IT outage criticisms. This knowledge is richer than anything the live site serves to bots. The gap is inverted — the model knows more about PTSB's products and reputation than the site itself will disclose to any automated visitor.

Schema Posture

Neither the consumer site (via Wayback snapshots) nor the corporate site contains any JSON-LD structured data. The Wayback captures of ptsb.ie pages — the homepage, current account page, and mortgages page — show zero schema markup of any type. No WebSite, Organization, BankOrCreditUnion, Product, FAQPage, or BreadcrumbList schema is present. The corporate site also lacks all schema types. This is a complete absence of semantic markup across both domains.

External Signals

The corporate site links to social channels (Facebook, LinkedIn, X/Twitter, YouTube) and references permanenttsb.ie and ptsb.ie as the consumer banking URLs — both of which are fully Akamai-blocked. DuckDuckGo searches for PTSB products, reviews, and news return zero results, suggesting the site has minimal conventional search visibility as well. The only accessible web property is the thin corporate investor site, which contains no product information, rates, or customer-facing content.

Findings

1. All AI crawlers receive 403 on every consumer URL High

   Every AI crawler tested (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended, etc.) receives a 403 Access Denied from Akamai on all URLs under ptsb.ie, permanenttsb.ie, and www.permanenttsb.ie. No user-agent differentiation exists; the block is absolute.

   What to change: Allow AI crawlers (e.g., GPTBot, Google-Extended) to access product pages by updating Akamai WAF rules to permit known bot user-agents.

2. Robots.txt returns 403 for all domains High

   The robots.txt files for ptsb.ie, permanenttsb.ie, and www.permanenttsb.ie all return 403 Access Denied, preventing crawlers from reading any crawl directives.

   What to change: Serve a valid robots.txt from ptsb.ie and permanenttsb.ie that allows AI crawlers to access product content.

3. No llms.txt file on any domain Medium

   The llms.txt file is missing from ptsb.ie, permanenttsb.ie, and permanenttsbgroup.ie, meaning there is no AI-friendly content summary available.

   What to change: Create an llms.txt file on ptsb.ie that lists key product pages and a brief site description.

4. Sitemap.xml returns 403 on consumer domain High

   The sitemap.xml for ptsb.ie returns 403, preventing crawlers from discovering the site's URL structure.

   What to change: Serve a valid sitemap.xml from ptsb.ie that lists all important pages.

5. No JSON-LD structured data on any page High

   Both the consumer site (via Wayback snapshots) and the corporate site lack any JSON-LD schema markup. No WebSite, Organization, BankOrCreditUnion, Product, FAQPage, or BreadcrumbList schema is present.

   What to change: Add JSON-LD structured data for Organization, WebSite, BankOrCreditUnion, Product (for accounts/mortgages), and BreadcrumbList to all key pages.

6. Corporate site lacks product information High

   The only accessible web property (permanenttsbgroup.ie) contains only thin corporate boilerplate (~130 words on homepage) and no product details, rates, or customer-facing content.

   What to change: Add product pages (e.g., current accounts, mortgages) to the corporate site or ensure the consumer site is accessible to AI crawlers.

7. Zero search results for PTSB products Medium

   DuckDuckGo searches for PTSB products, reviews, and news return zero results, indicating minimal conventional search visibility.

   What to change: Improve SEO fundamentals: ensure pages are indexable, add meta tags, and build backlinks.

8. LLM knows more about PTSB than the site reveals Medium

   The LLM prior on PTSB is detailed (history, products, reputation), but the live site serves no product content to bots, creating an inverted knowledge gap where models rely on outdated or third-party information.

   What to change: Allow AI crawlers to access product pages and add structured data to ensure accurate, up-to-date information is available.

9. Corporate robots.txt does not mention AI crawlers Low

   The corporate site's robots.txt allows all user-agents broadly but does not explicitly mention any AI crawler, missing an opportunity to guide AI access.

   What to change: Add explicit directives for AI crawlers (e.g., GPTBot, ClaudeBot) in the corporate robots.txt.

10. Corporate sitemap.xml is empty Low

    The sitemap.xml at permanenttsbgroup.ie returns a 200 response but contains no URLs, providing no crawl guidance.

    What to change: Populate the sitemap.xml with all relevant URLs from the corporate site.

What's working

• Corporate site is fully accessible to all AI crawlers — The corporate investor site at permanenttsbgroup.ie returns 200 for all 11 bots tested, including GPTBot, ClaudeBot, and Google-Extended, ensuring at least some web presence is crawlable.
• Corporate robots.txt allows all user-agents broadly — The robots.txt at permanenttsbgroup.ie does not block any AI crawler, allowing full access to the corporate site.
• Wayback Machine has recent snapshots of consumer site — The Wayback Machine contains snapshots of ptsb.ie from 2025 and 2026, preserving historical content that can be used to reconstruct product information.
• LLM has detailed prior knowledge of PTSB — The LLM knows PTSB's history, products (Explore current account), and recent events (Ulster Bank loan acquisition), providing a foundation that can be leveraged with accurate site content.