In the digital age, websites are bombarded by automated software programs known as "bots." While some bots bring benefits, others can harm your website, slow down its performance, or even exploit its vulnerabilities. This tutorial explores how to block bots from your website effectively, ensuring a better user experience, safeguarding your data, and maintaining your website's integrity.
What Are Bots?
"Bots" are software programs designed to perform automated tasks on the internet. These tasks can range from indexing web pages for search engines to scraping content, monitoring website health, or engaging in malicious activities.
Types of Bots
-
Automated Bots, Crawlers, & Scrapers
These bots roam the web, visiting pages systematically to gather information. They may target specific websites or entire sets of pages. -
Manual Bots & Scrapers
Designed for targeted websites or specific pages, these bots often require some level of human intervention to run. -
Good Bots
These bots provide value to the world. Examples include:- Googlebot: Indexes web pages to improve search engine functionality.
- SEO tools: Analyze site health and offer optimization recommendations.
-
Bad Bots
Malicious bots aim to harm businesses or steal information, often for profit. Examples include bots that:- Scrape content and republish it.
- Attempt to overload servers.
- Exploit vulnerabilities to hack into websites.
Why Would You Want to Block Bots?
- Data Theft: Bots can scrape your data and use it without permission, often for financial gain.
- Server Overload: Excessive bot traffic increases server costs and slows your website.
- SEO Competition: Scraped content can be republished, harming your site's SEO rankings.
- Malicious Activity: Some bots exploit vulnerabilities, jeopardizing website security.
Good Bots vs. Bad Bots
Good bots often respect directives in your robots.txt file, while bad bots typically ignore these guidelines. To protect your website, relying solely on robots.txt isn't enough—you need advanced measures like server-level blocking or firewall configurations.
How to Block Bots
There are several ways to block bots, depending on your goals and technical setup. Below, we explore the most common methods:
1. Using robots.txt
The robots.txt file provides instructions to web crawlers about which parts of your site they can or cannot access.
Example:
- Advantages: Simple to implement, good for blocking well-behaved bots.
- Disadvantages: Ignored by malicious bots.
2. Firewall Rules (e.g., Cloudflare)
Firewalls can block bots at the network level before they reach your server. Services like Cloudflare offer customizable rules to block bad bots based on IP, user agent, or behavior patterns.
- Advantages: Highly effective against persistent bots.
- Disadvantages: May require a subscription for advanced features.
3. Server Configuration (e.g., NGINX, Apache)
Blocking bots directly at the server level ensures they never reach your website.
- NGINX Example:
- Apache Example (using
.htaccess):
- Advantages: Precise and robust.
- Disadvantages: Requires technical expertise.
4. JavaScript-Based Solutions
Inject JavaScript into your site to differentiate bots from human visitors. Some bots cannot execute JavaScript, making this an effective filter.
- Advantages: Good for identifying bad bots.
- Disadvantages: May not block all bots, and some good bots might be affected.
5. Other Methods
- CAPTCHAs: Prevent bots from submitting forms or accessing certain areas.
- Behavioral Analysis: Track IPs and behavior patterns to identify bots.
- Bot Management Tools: Tools like BotGuard or Distil Networks offer specialized solutions.
Comprehensive Bot List
See below a list of popular bots.
| Bot Name | Description |
| Discordbot | Official web crawler for Discord to index and preview links |
| AI2Bot | Research crawler for AI and machine learning data collection |
| Applebot-Extended | Apple's extended web crawling and indexing bot |
| Bytespider | ByteDance's web crawling bot used by TikTok and other platforms |
| CCBot | Commoncrawl's web archiving and indexing bot |
| ClaudeBot | Anthropic's bot for web crawling and AI research |
| cohere-training-data-crawler | Cohere AI's bot for collecting machine learning training data |
| Diffbot | Automated web page extraction and structured data retrieval bot |
| FacebookBot | Meta's web crawler for link previews and content indexing |
| Google-Extended | Google's extended bot for advanced web crawling and indexing |
| GPTBot | OpenAI's web crawling bot for collecting training data |
| Kangaroo Bot | A generic web crawling bot with unclear specific purpose |
| Meta-ExternalAgent | Meta's external web crawling and data collection bot |
| omgili | Social media and web content indexing bot |
| PanguBot | Baidu's web crawling and search indexing bot |
| Timpibot | A specialized web crawling bot with specific data collection goals |
| Webzio-Extended | Web crawling and data extraction bot |
| Amazonbot | Amazon's web crawling bot for product and content indexing |
| Applebot | Apple's primary web crawling and search indexing bot |
| OAI-SearchBot | OpenAI's search-related web crawling bot |
| PerplexityBot | Perplexity AI's web crawling and information retrieval bot |
| YouBot | You.com's search and web crawling bot |
| HeadlessChrome | Google Chrome's headless browser used for web scraping and testing |
| adbeat_bot | Ad monitoring and intelligence gathering bot |
| AdsBot-Google | Google's bot for analyzing and monitoring advertising content |
| AdsBot-Google-Mobile | Google's mobile-specific advertising content crawler |
| aiHitBot | Web crawling and data collection bot |
| AndersPinkBot | Specialized web crawling bot for specific data collection |
| ArchiveBot | Web archiving and preservation crawler |
| AwarioBot | Social media and web monitoring bot |
| AwarioSmartBot | Advanced version of Awario's web and social media crawler |
| BitSightBot | Cybersecurity and risk assessment web crawler |
| Blackboard | Educational platform's web crawling bot |
| BrandVerity | Brand monitoring and online protection bot |
| Cincraw | Generic web crawling bot |
| ev-crawler | Event and web content crawling bot |
| Google-Safety | Google's safety and security web crawler |
| HubSpot | Marketing and sales platform's web crawling bot |
| ImagesiftBot | Image search and indexing bot |
| IonCrawl | Web crawling and data extraction bot |
| Jugendschutzprogramm-Crawler | German youth protection web crawler |
| KStandBot | Specialized web crawling bot |
| LightspeedSystemsCrawler | Web crawling bot for Lightspeed systems |
| linkfluence | Social media and web influence tracking bot |
| LinkWalker | Web link crawling and analysis bot |
| magpie-crawler | Web content indexing and crawling bot |
| Mediapartners-Google | Google's bot for media and content partner indexing |
| Mediatoolkitbot | Media monitoring and analysis web crawler |
| MuckRack | Journalism and media tracking bot |
| NetcraftSurveyAgent | Web server and technology survey bot |
| Netvibes | Content aggregation and web crawling bot |
| Pandalytics | Web analytics and data collection bot |
| panscient.com | Web crawling and information gathering bot |
| proximic | Contextual advertising and web content bot |
| scoop.it | Content curation and discovery bot |
| SeekportBot | Search and web crawling bot |
| SMTBot | Social media tracking and analysis bot |
| trendictionbot | Social media and trend tracking bot |
| TrendsmapResolver | Web trend mapping and analysis bot |
| Turnitin | Plagiarism detection and academic content checking bot |
| TurnitinBot | Specific version of Turnitin's web crawling bot |
| TweetmemeBot | Social media trend and content tracking bot |
| Twingly | Blog and social media indexing bot |
| um-LN | Specialized web crawling bot |
| VelenPublicWebCrawler | Public web crawling and indexing bot |
| virustotal | Cybersecurity and file scanning bot |
| Webzio | Web crawling and data extraction bot |
| ZoominfoBot | Business and professional information gathering bot |
| 008 | Generic web crawling bot |
| dcrawl | Website downloading and offline browsing tool |
| HTTrack | Specific version of HTTrack website copier |
| HTTrack 3.0 | Web page metadata extraction bot |
| MetaInspector | News content aggregation and crawling bot |
| newspaper | Apache's open-source web crawling and indexing bot |
| Nutch | Website downloading and offline browsing tool |
| Offline Explorer | Open-source web indexing bot |
| OpenindexSpider | Python-based web scraping framework |
| Scrapy | Chinese search engine's web crawling bot |
| 360Spider | Baidu's primary web crawling and indexing bot |
| Baiduspider | Microsoft Bing's web crawling and search indexing bot |
| bingbot | Vietnamese search engine's web crawler |
| coccocbot-web | DuckDuckGo's web crawling and search indexing bot |
| DuckDuckBot | DuckDuckGo's favicon retrieval bot |
| DuckDuckGo-Favicons-Bot | Google's RSS and Atom feed crawling bot |
| Feedfetcher-Google | Google's favicon retrieval bot |
| Google Favicon | Google's primary web crawling and search indexing bot |
| Googlebot | Google's image search and indexing bot |
| Googlebot-Image | Google's mobile-specific web crawling bot |
| Googlebot-Mobile | Google's news content crawling and indexing bot |
| Googlebot-News | Google's video search and indexing bot |
| Googlebot-Video | Other Google-related web crawling bots |
| GoogleOther | Chinese search engine's web crawler |
| HaoSouSpider | Mojeek search engine's web crawling bot |
| MojeekBot | Microsoft's legacy web crawling bot |
| msnbot | Microsoft's media-specific web crawling bot |
| msnbot-media | Huawei's web crawling and search indexing bot |
| PetalBot | Qwant search engine's web crawling bot |
| Qwantbot | Qwant's web crawling and indexing bot |
| Qwantify | Academic research and publication indexing bot |
| SemanticScholarBot | Czech search engine's web crawling bot |
| SeznamBot | Chinese search engine's web crawler |
| Sogou web spider | Search engine web crawling bot |
| teoma | Reverse image search bot |
| TinEye | Specific version of TinEye's image search bot |
| TinEye-bot | Decentralized peer-to-peer search engine bot |
| yacybot | Yahoo's web crawling and search indexing bot |
| Yahoo! Slurp | Russian search engine's primary web crawling bot |
| Yandex | Yandex's web crawling and indexing bot |
| YandexBot | Yandex's image search and indexing bot |
| YandexImages | Yandex's rendering and resource crawling bot |
| YandexRenderResourcesBot | Naver's Korean search engine web crawler |
| Yeti | Chinese search engine's web crawler |
| YisouSpider | Zum search engine's web crawling bot |
| ZumBot | SEO and backlink analysis bot |
| AhrefsBot | Domain and website metric crawling bot |
| BLEXBot | SEO and search engine data collection bot |
| DataForSeoBot | Link checking and website crawling bot |
| dotbot | Majestic's web crawling and link analysis bot |
| MJ12bot | SEO and marketing intelligence bot |
| SemrushBot | Facebook's external link preview bot |
| facebookexternalhit | LinkedIn's link preview and content indexing bot |
| LinkedInBot | Twitter's link preview and content indexing bot |
| Twitterbot | Anthropic's web crawling research bot |
| anthropic-ai | Claude's web crawling and research bot |
| Claude-Web | Cohere AI's web data collection bot |
| cohere-ai | Appears to be an invalid or mistyped bot name |
Tips for Maintaining the List:
- Monitor GitHub for public lists of bots.
- Keep your own updated bot-tracking list using tools like One Scales.
- Share updates with the community to ensure your data remains current.
Additional Considerations
Crawl-Delay Options
You can slow down bots using the crawl-delay directive in robots.txt:
This limits the frequency of requests but may not be respected by bad bots.
Tracking Bots Before Blocking
Monitor bot activity using tools like Google Analytics, server logs, or specialized software to identify problematic patterns before applying blocks.
Challenges
- Bots Can Change Names: Bad bots often disguise themselves as legitimate ones.
- False Positives: Blocking good bots accidentally can impact your site's SEO or functionality.
- Regular Updates: The list of bots evolves, requiring constant attention.
