SBIntuitionsBot user agent
Operated by SB Intuitions
SBIntuitionsBot is SB Intuitions' crawler that collects web data for AI development and information analysis.
The SBIntuitionsBot bot at a glance
- SBIntuitionsBot is operated by SB Intuitions and collects public web pages that may be used to train AI models.
- The robots.txt token for SBIntuitionsBot is SBIntuitionsBot.
- Blocking an AI training crawler has no effect on Google or Bing rankings.
- SBIntuitionsBot robots.txt support: Yes.
- Recommendation for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Your choice.
What is SBIntuitionsBot?
SBIntuitionsBot gathers pages for SB Intuitions, a SoftBank company building Japanese language models.
SB Intuitions states the crawler follows the Robots Exclusion Protocol (RFC 9309).
Should you block SBIntuitionsBot?
Blocking SBIntuitionsBot is a business decision: it protects your content but can lower how well AI products know your brand.
| Effect on search rankings | Blocking an AI training crawler has no effect on Google or Bing rankings. |
|---|---|
| Effect on AI visibility | Blocking keeps your future pages out of that company's training data, so its models may know less about your brand over time. It does not remove you from that company's AI search, which uses a separate bot. |
| Follows robots.txt | Yes |
| Recommendation | Your choice |
How to block or allow SBIntuitionsBot
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 SBIntuitionsBot is matched case-insensitively.
robots.txt: block
# Block SBIntuitionsBot
User-agent: SBIntuitionsBot
Disallow: /robots.txt: allow
# Allow SBIntuitionsBot
User-agent: SBIntuitionsBot
Allow: /robots.txt: partial
# Keep SBIntuitionsBot out of private areas only
User-agent: SBIntuitionsBot
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Allow: /Nginx
# Nginx: return 403 to SBIntuitionsBot
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(SBIntuitionsBot)") {
return 403;
}Apache
# Apache .htaccess: return 403 to SBIntuitionsBot
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (SBIntuitionsBot) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]Cloudflare WAF
# Cloudflare > Security > WAF > Custom rule, action: Block
(http.user_agent contains "SBIntuitionsBot")How to verify real SBIntuitionsBot traffic
SB Intuitions publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for SBIntuitionsBot, 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 SBIntuitionsBot in your server logs
Search the web server access log for the token. The command below counts SBIntuitionsBot requests per URL on Nginx or Apache.
grep -i "SBIntuitionsBot" 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.
SBIntuitionsBot FAQ
SBIntuitionsBot uses the robots.txt token "SBIntuitionsBot". SB Intuitions does not publish a full user-agent string, so match the token inside the User-Agent header.
Yes. SB Intuitions states that SBIntuitionsBot follows robots.txt rules written for the "SBIntuitionsBot" token.
Blocking an AI training crawler has no effect on Google or Bing rankings. Blocking keeps your future pages out of that company's training data, so its models may know less about your brand over time. It does not remove you from that company's AI search, which uses a separate bot.
Add two lines to the robots.txt file at the root of each domain and subdomain: "User-agent: SBIntuitionsBot" followed by "Disallow: /". The token is case-insensitive. Changes can take up to 24 hours to be picked up.
Not reliably. SB Intuitions publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for SBIntuitionsBot, so anyone can send the same user agent. Rate-limit unusual volume instead of trusting the name.
Search your server access log for "SBIntuitionsBot", for example with: grep -i "SBIntuitionsBot" access.log. The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits per AI bot from an uploaded log file.
Sources: SB Intuitions 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.
