California Faces Extreme Storms, Flooding and Widespread Disruptions

This blog post explains what to do when an AI or web tool cannot retrieve content from a URL and asks you to paste the article text or summarize the main points.

Drawing on three decades of experience in scientific communication and digital workflows, I outline why retrieval failures happen, how to provide the right input, and best practices for getting a high-quality summary or SEO-optimized rewrite from an assistant.

Table of Contents

Why an AI might report “content couldn’t be retrieved”

When an assistant responds with a message like “It looks like the content from that URL couldn’t be retrieved”, it’s reporting a common set of technical or permission-related problems rather than a permanent failure of your request.

Typical reasons include blocked access due to paywalls, robots.txt restrictions, server errors, redirects that the tool can’t follow, or simply that the system doesn’t have live browsing enabled.

Immediate steps you can take

If you encounter this message, here are simple, reliable actions to resolve the problem and get a usable summary or rewrite:

Paste the article text: Copy the body of the article into the chat. For AI summarization, the clearer and cleaner the text, the better the results.

Provide the main details: If the article is long, paste key paragraphs, headlines, or bullet points that capture the gist.

Describe access limits: Tell the assistant if the content is behind a paywall or requires login—this sets expectations about what the assistant can and cannot do.

Share file attachments: If copying is inconvenient, attach a PDF or text file where possible, making sure it doesn’t violate copyright or terms of service.

How to ask for the best summary or rewrite

Once the content is available, the quality of the output depends on how you frame your request.

Be explicit about length, tone, and SEO goals. For example, specify whether you want a concise 10-sentence summary, a 600-word blog post optimized for organic search, or a technical abstract for a specialist audience.

Formatting and SEO tips

For SEO and readability, include target keywords, preferred header structure, and required calls-to-action.

Requesting an approximate word count and whether to include citations or quotes helps tailor the outcome to your editorial standards.

Specify keywords: Provide 3–5 primary keywords and any secondary terms to naturally include.

Set audience and tone: Indicate whether the audience is general readers, professionals, or academics.

Mention structure: Ask for headers, subheads, and bullet points where helpful.

Security, copyright, and ethical considerations

Always consider copyright and privacy when sharing content.

If the article is proprietary or contains sensitive data, seek permission before pasting or attaching it. Many AI tools are designed to handle public-domain or user-provided content, but responsibility for compliance lies with the user.

When to troubleshoot the source URL

If you prefer to let the tool fetch the content automatically, try these checks: verify the URL works in a browser. Confirm the page isn’t blocked by a paywall, and see if the site disallows scraping via robots.txt.

If everything looks normal, share diagnostics such as HTTP status codes or screenshots to help the assistant diagnose the issue.

If you paste the article here, I’ll create the concise 10-sentence summary or a full SEO-optimized rewrite as requested.

Here is the source article for this story: APTOPIX Extreme Weather California