Which structured-data formats work with Artsdata?

Artsdata's guidance names JSON-LD, RDFa, and microdata. For an event to qualify for loading, the markup needs a name, `startDate`, and a location represented as a Place.

Can robots.txt control Artsdata Crawler?

Yes. The record and Artsdata's own crawler instructions say it respects robots.txt. Rules can target the stable `artsdata-crawler` token.

How can a site authenticate the crawler?

Validate its Web Bot Auth HTTP message signature with the keys published in Artsdata's signature directory. The user-agent label alone is easy to copy.

Will Artsdata crawling put an event into AI answers?

There is no documented link to AI answer systems or model training. The direct result is possible inclusion in Artsdata's reusable knowledge graph.

Artsdata Crawler & AI Search: What to Know

What is Artsdata Crawler?

Artsdata Crawler gathers public information about arts and culture in Canada for the Artsdata knowledge graph. Culture Creates operates the crawler. Event pages are a central source, especially when an arts organization has made its event details readable as structured data.

Artsdata accepts event markup in JSON-LD, RDFa, or microdata. Its loading guidance requires a name and start date, plus a location identified as a Place. Event data must meet those published minimums to be eligible for scraping and loading into Artsdata.

The crawler uses the artsdata-crawler token and places delays between requests. Artsdata documents robots.txt compliance. It also publishes a Web Bot Auth signature directory at https://kg.artsdata.ca/.well-known/http-message-signatures-directory, which gives sites a stronger check than the user-agent string alone.

Material loaded into Artsdata becomes part of a Linked Open Data graph that other services can query or reuse. That can widen discovery of an event through Artsdata's data consumers. The crawler is not documented as collecting pages for AI answers or model training, so access does not by itself improve visibility in generative search.

Indirectly relevant

Is Artsdata Crawler relevant for AI search?

Indirectly. Artsdata Crawler has no AI product of its own, but its output can end up in the systems that AI answers draw on.

Artsdata Crawler collects content from many sites and redistributes it through its own product. Aggregated copies can end up in datasets that AI systems later learn from, and some aggregators are themselves sources that AI answer engines draw on.

How to handle Artsdata Crawler

Leave event pages crawlable when the organization wants Artsdata to load and refresh them. Check the structured data first, since access alone will not fix an event record that omits a required name, date, or place. Administrative sections can remain excluded.

Artsdata documents support for a complete block:

User-agent: artsdata-crawler
Disallow: /

Blocking the crawler stops it from collecting later event changes from the affected pages. For selective access, allow the public calendar and disallow unrelated paths. Sites that authenticate bots should validate the HTTP message signature against Artsdata's published directory.

Examples

A theatre checks that each production page has Event JSON-LD with a start date and a Place for the venue, then allows `artsdata-crawler` on those URLs.
A festival opens its public schedule to Artsdata, keeps preview pages disallowed, and verifies signed crawler requests before exempting them from a narrow bot filter.

Frequently asked questions about Artsdata Crawler

Learn about AI visibility monitoring and how Promptwatch helps your brand succeed in AI search.

It looks for publicly available arts and culture data in Canada, with a particular focus on event information that can be loaded into the Artsdata knowledge graph.