Sogou web spider user agent
Operated by Sogou
Sogou web spider is Sogou's crawler that indexes pages for Sogou search in China.
The Sogou web spider bot at a glance
- Sogou web spider is operated by Sogou and crawls web pages for a search engine index.
- The robots.txt token for Sogou web spider is Sogou web spider.
- Blocking a search engine crawler removes your pages from that search engine's results.
- Sogou web spider robots.txt support: Yes.
- Recommendation for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Allow.
What is Sogou web spider?
Sogou web spider collects pages for Sogou, a Chinese search engine owned by Tencent.
Sogou documents how to control its spider with robots.txt.
Should you block Sogou web spider?
Allow Sogou web spider unless it causes a measurable load problem.
| Effect on search rankings | Blocking a search engine crawler removes your pages from that search engine's results. |
|---|---|
| Effect on AI visibility | AI features built on that search index, such as Google AI Overviews and AI Mode on top of Googlebot, also lose access to your pages. |
| Follows robots.txt | Yes |
| Recommendation | Allow |
How to block or allow Sogou web spider
Put the robots.txt rule in the file at the root of every domain and subdomain, for example https://example.com/robots.txt. The token Sogou web spider is matched case-insensitively.
robots.txt: block
# Block Sogou web spider
User-agent: Sogou web spider
Disallow: /robots.txt: allow
# Allow Sogou web spider
User-agent: Sogou web spider
Allow: /robots.txt: partial
# Keep Sogou web spider out of private areas only
User-agent: Sogou web spider
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Allow: /Nginx
# Nginx: return 403 to Sogou web spider
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(Sogou web spider)") {
return 403;
}Apache
# Apache .htaccess: return 403 to Sogou web spider
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (Sogou web spider) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]Cloudflare WAF
# Cloudflare > Security > WAF > Custom rule, action: Block
(http.user_agent contains "Sogou web spider")How to verify real Sogou web spider traffic
Sogou publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for Sogou web spider, so the user agent cannot be verified. Anyone can send the same string. Rate-limit unusual volume instead of trusting the name.
How to find Sogou web spider in your server logs
Search the web server access log for the token. The command below counts Sogou web spider requests per URL on Nginx or Apache.
grep -i "Sogou web spider" access.log | awk '{print $7}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20For a full report per AI bot, upload the log to the AI Log File Analyzer, a free tool by Justin Hà.
Sogou web spider FAQ
Sogou web spider uses the robots.txt token "Sogou web spider". Sogou does not publish a full user-agent string, so match the token inside the User-Agent header.
Yes. Sogou states that Sogou web spider follows robots.txt rules written for the "Sogou web spider" token.
Blocking a search engine crawler removes your pages from that search engine's results. AI features built on that search index, such as Google AI Overviews and AI Mode on top of Googlebot, also lose access to your pages.
Add two lines to the robots.txt file at the root of each domain and subdomain: "User-agent: Sogou web spider" followed by "Disallow: /". The token is case-insensitive. Changes can take up to 24 hours to be picked up.
Not reliably. Sogou publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for Sogou web spider, so anyone can send the same user agent. Rate-limit unusual volume instead of trusting the name.
Search your server access log for "Sogou web spider", for example with: grep -i "Sogou web spider" access.log. The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits per AI bot from an uploaded log file.
Sources: Sogou crawler documentation. Last reviewed by Justin Hà.
See which of these bots actually reach your website
The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits from GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and other AI crawlers in your server log, for free. The GEO Technical Package sets up robots.txt, llms.txt and crawler access for AI search.
