Bluesky user agent
Operated by Bluesky
Bluesky is the user agent of the Bluesky link preview service, which builds cards for links in posts.
The Bluesky bot at a glance
- Bluesky is operated by Bluesky and reads page titles, descriptions and images to build link previews.
- The robots.txt token for Bluesky is Bluesky.
- Blocking a social preview bot has no effect on search rankings.
- Bluesky robots.txt support: Not documented.
- Recommendation for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Allow.
What is Bluesky?
The Bluesky preview service reads a page’s Open Graph tags when a link is added to a post.
Bluesky has not published a crawler page for this user agent.
Should you block Bluesky?
Allow Bluesky unless it causes a measurable load problem.
| Effect on search rankings | Blocking a social preview bot has no effect on search rankings. |
|---|---|
| Effect on AI visibility | No direct effect on AI answers, but shared links lose their title, image and description, which usually lowers clicks from social and chat apps. |
| Follows robots.txt | Not documented |
| Recommendation | Allow |
How to block or allow Bluesky
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 Bluesky is matched case-insensitively. robots.txt alone may not stop Bluesky, so add the Nginx, Apache or Cloudflare rule as well.
robots.txt: block
# Block Bluesky
User-agent: Bluesky
Disallow: /robots.txt: allow
# Allow Bluesky
User-agent: Bluesky
Allow: /robots.txt: partial
# Keep Bluesky out of private areas only
User-agent: Bluesky
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Allow: /Nginx
# Nginx: return 403 to Bluesky
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(Bluesky)") {
return 403;
}Apache
# Apache .htaccess: return 403 to Bluesky
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (Bluesky) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]Cloudflare WAF
# Cloudflare > Security > WAF > Custom rule, action: Block
(http.user_agent contains "Bluesky")How to verify real Bluesky traffic
Bluesky publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for Bluesky, 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 Bluesky in your server logs
Search the web server access log for the token. The command below counts Bluesky requests per URL on Nginx or Apache.
grep -i "Bluesky" 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.
Bluesky user agent string
The full user agent Bluesky publishes for Bluesky. Version numbers such as Chrome/W.X.Y.Z change over time, so match the token, not the whole string.
Bluesky/Bluesky FAQ
Bluesky identifies itself with the robots.txt token "Bluesky". A typical request header reads: Bluesky/
Bluesky has not documented how Bluesky treats robots.txt. Add a robots.txt rule and back it with a server rule if the traffic matters to you.
Blocking a social preview bot has no effect on search rankings. No direct effect on AI answers, but shared links lose their title, image and description, which usually lowers clicks from social and chat apps.
Add two lines to the robots.txt file at the root of each domain and subdomain: "User-agent: Bluesky" followed by "Disallow: /". The token is case-insensitive. Changes can take up to 24 hours to be picked up.
Not reliably. Bluesky publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for Bluesky, so anyone can send the same user agent. Rate-limit unusual volume instead of trusting the name.
Search your server access log for "Bluesky", for example with: grep -i "Bluesky" access.log. The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits per AI bot from an uploaded log file.
Sources: Public bot registry. 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.
