name: People Inc / Dotdash Meredith Rate Limits and Bot Policy
description: |
  People Inc does not publish numerical rate limits because it does not run a
  public developer API. The addressable machine-readable surface is rate-
  shaped at the CDN/WAF edge across each brand domain, with per-bot policy
  declarations in /robots.txt. This file documents the observed policy regime
  using the API Commons Rate Limits 0.1 shape.
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/meredith/main/rate-limits/meredith-rate-limits.yml
created: '2026-05-23'
modified: '2026-05-23'
specificationVersion: 'rate-limits-0.1'
providerId: meredith
providerName: People Inc

policies:

  - id: cdn-edge-shaping
    surface: All Brand Domains
    type: edge-rate-shaping
    appliesTo:
      - https://www.people.com
      - https://www.allrecipes.com
      - https://www.investopedia.com
      - https://www.bhg.com
      - https://www.foodandwine.com
      - https://www.realsimple.com
      - https://www.southernliving.com
      - https://www.verywellhealth.com
      - https://www.byrdie.com
      - https://www.travelandleisure.com
      - https://www.eatingwell.com
      - https://www.thespruce.com
      - https://www.simplyrecipes.com
      - https://www.seriouseats.com
      - https://www.health.com
      - https://www.shape.com
      - https://www.brides.com
      - https://www.instyle.com
      - https://www.parents.com
      - https://ew.com
      - https://www.lifewire.com
      - https://www.treehugger.com
      - https://www.tripsavvy.com
      - https://www.thebalancemoney.com
      - https://www.thespruceeats.com
      - https://www.thesprucepets.com
      - https://www.liquor.com
      - https://www.dailypaws.com
      - https://www.marthastewart.com
    observedBehavior:
      defaultUserAgent: |
        Requests with a non-browser User-Agent (e.g. "curl/8.x", "python-
        requests", default tool UAs) receive an immediate HTTP 403 across
        every brand. The WAF appears to enforce this at the edge before
        path-level rules.
      browserUserAgent: |
        Requests with a realistic browser User-Agent succeed at human-pace
        rates. No documented per-IP budget.
      sitemap: |
        /sitemap.xml is consistently served regardless of UA (per RFC
        9309 / sitemaps.org expectations).
      robotsTxt: |
        /robots.txt is always served and is the canonical statement of
        permitted access.

  - id: ai-bot-policy
    surface: All Brand Domains
    type: robots-policy
    appliesToHostsPattern: "*.{brand-domain}"
    rules:
      fullyBlocked:
        - CCBot
        - news-please
        - anthropic-ai
        - ClaudeBot
        - Claude-Web
        - cohere-ai
        - ImagesiftBot
        - FriendlyCrawler
        - Quora-Bot
        - omgilibot
        - omgili
        - PerplexityBot
      partiallyRestricted:
        agents:
          - ChatGPT-User
          - OAI-SearchBot
          - GPTBot
        restriction: "Disallow: /thmb/ (the image-transform / thumbnail subtree)"
      explicitlyAllowed:
        - Pinterest
        - Pinterestbot
    notes: |
      The blocklist is identical across People.com, Allrecipes.com,
      Investopedia.com, BHG.com (and likely every other brand) — strong
      evidence that People Inc maintains a single corporate robots.txt
      template that propagates to all brand domains.

  - id: rss-feed-shaping
    surface: Per-Brand /feed Endpoint
    type: implicit-rate-limit
    appliesTo:
      - https://{brand-domain}/feed
      - https://{brand-domain}/{section}/feed
    observedBehavior: |
      No published rate limit. Requests with a realistic User-Agent at
      human-pace (1 request per second per brand) reliably return RSS
      content. Bursts and bot-class UAs trigger the same edge 403 as the
      site at large.

guidance:
  - audience: Naftiko-class Agents
    recommendation: |
      Honor the per-brand robots.txt. Use the people-inc-rss and people-inc-
      sitemap capabilities (which already set realistic UAs and respect
      bot policy). Avoid bulk crawls.
  - audience: Governance / Rights Management Teams
    recommendation: |
      Use the ai-bot-policy-audit capability to capture a snapshot of the
      AI bot policy across the portfolio on a recurring cadence; flag
      changes to inform internal AI-access agreements.