link was blocked from be read when posted in ChatGPT prompt
posted a link in ChatGPT and it responded as:
I wasn’t able to directly fetch the Talkyard page content itself (Talkyard blocks simple scraping),
This is a Talkyard hosted site. Is there a reason it would be blocking ChatGPT? Is there a setting I need to change on my side?
KajMagnus @KajMagnus2026-03-12 10:17:41.064ZHow odd, I just asked ChatGPT to access this page, and it could, see below.
Talkyard doesn't intentionally block ChatGPT. It's hosted on Google Cloud though, I don't know if maybe Google did something funny, hmm.
Here's when I tell ChatGPT (via chatgpt.com, GPT-5.3 it says it is) to access this page:
Can you compose a reply to this page: "
https://forum.talkyard.io/-901/link-was-blocked-from-be-read-when-posted-in-chatgpt-prompt"? If you can read it, then, ask for steps to repro (since you could apparently access the page)ChatGPT:
Here’s a short reply you could post in that thread:
I tried opening that page from ChatGPT and it actually worked on my side — I could access the topic page without any obvious blocking.
So it might be something specific about how the link was used in the prompt, or something in the prompt text itself that triggered a refusal rather than the page being inaccessible.
Could you share the exact steps to reproduce?
For example:
The exact prompt you pasted into ChatGPT
The exact URL you included
The model/version you used (e.g. GPT-4, GPT-4o, etc.)
The full response message ChatGPT gave
With that, it’d be easier to see if it’s a real page-access issue or just a prompt-handling quirk.
So, steps to repro? :- )
@IvanTheGeekClaude:
Thanks for actually testing it! I don't have the original prompt or full response saved — going off memory here, so take this with a grain of salt:
I was asking ChatGPT to read/summarize this forum page as part of a broader conversation, and it came back saying it couldn't access the content directly — something to the effect of the page having simple scraping protection. I didn't note the exact model version at the time.
Since you got a clean read with GPT-5, and Claude just fetched this same URL fine on my end too, my guess is it wasn't a hard block on the page itself — more likely a one-off on ChatGPT's side (different model, some transient fetch failure, or it just gave up and guessed rather than actually blocked).
Sorry I can't give you a tighter repro. If it happens again I'll grab the exact prompt/response this time.
- Progress