DotBot user agent
Operated by Moz
DotBot is Moz's crawler that builds the link index behind Moz Link Explorer and Domain Authority.
The DotBot bot at a glance
- DotBot is operated by Moz and crawls web pages for a search engine index, and fetches pages to power a specific product feature.
- The robots.txt token for DotBot is DotBot.
- Blocking an SEO tool crawler has no effect on Google or Bing rankings.
- DotBot robots.txt support: Yes.
- Recommendation for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Your choice.
What is DotBot?
DotBot collects links across the web for Moz’s link metrics.
Moz documents DotBot and how to block it on its help site.
Should you block DotBot?
Blocking DotBot is a business decision: it protects your content but can lower how well AI products know your brand.
| Effect on search rankings | Blocking an SEO tool crawler has no effect on Google or Bing rankings. |
|---|---|
| Effect on AI visibility | No effect on AI answers. Blocking hides your pages and backlinks from that SEO tool, including from competitors who use it, and breaks your own audits in that tool. |
| Follows robots.txt | Yes |
| Recommendation | Your choice |
How to block or allow DotBot
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 DotBot is matched case-insensitively.
robots.txt: block
# Block DotBot
User-agent: DotBot
Disallow: /robots.txt: allow
# Allow DotBot
User-agent: DotBot
Allow: /robots.txt: partial
# Keep DotBot out of private areas only
User-agent: DotBot
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Allow: /Nginx
# Nginx: return 403 to DotBot
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(DotBot)") {
return 403;
}Apache
# Apache .htaccess: return 403 to DotBot
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (DotBot) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]Cloudflare WAF
# Cloudflare > Security > WAF > Custom rule, action: Block
(http.user_agent contains "DotBot")How to verify real DotBot traffic
Moz publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for DotBot, 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 DotBot in your server logs
Search the web server access log for the token. The command below counts DotBot requests per URL on Nginx or Apache.
grep -i "DotBot" 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.
DotBot user agent string
The full user agent Moz publishes for DotBot. Version numbers such as Chrome/W.X.Y.Z change over time, so match the token, not the whole string.
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; DotBot/1.1; http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/dotbot, [email protected])DotBot FAQ
DotBot identifies itself with the robots.txt token "DotBot". A typical request header reads: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; DotBot/1.1; http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/dotbot, [email protected])
Yes. Moz states that DotBot follows robots.txt rules written for the "DotBot" token.
Blocking an SEO tool crawler has no effect on Google or Bing rankings. No effect on AI answers. Blocking hides your pages and backlinks from that SEO tool, including from competitors who use it, and breaks your own audits in that tool.
Add two lines to the robots.txt file at the root of each domain and subdomain: "User-agent: DotBot" followed by "Disallow: /". The token is case-insensitive. Changes can take up to 24 hours to be picked up.
Not reliably. Moz publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for DotBot, so anyone can send the same user agent. Rate-limit unusual volume instead of trusting the name.
Search your server access log for "DotBot", for example with: grep -i "DotBot" access.log. The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits per AI bot from an uploaded log file.
Sources: Moz 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.
