Barkrowler user agent
Operated by Babbar
Barkrowler is Babbar's crawler that updates the link and semantic graph behind the Babbar SEO tool.
The Barkrowler bot at a glance
- Barkrowler is operated by Babbar and crawls web pages for a search engine index, and fetches pages to power a specific product feature.
- The robots.txt token for Barkrowler is Barkrowler.
- Blocking an SEO tool crawler has no effect on Google or Bing rankings.
- Barkrowler robots.txt support: Yes.
- Recommendation for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Your choice.
What is Barkrowler?
Babbar states Barkrowler follows robots.txt and crawl-delay.
Genuine Barkrowler hostnames end in babbar.eu.
Should you block Barkrowler?
Blocking Barkrowler 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 Barkrowler
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 Barkrowler is matched case-insensitively.
robots.txt: block
# Block Barkrowler
User-agent: Barkrowler
Disallow: /robots.txt: allow
# Allow Barkrowler
User-agent: Barkrowler
Allow: /robots.txt: partial
# Keep Barkrowler out of private areas only
User-agent: Barkrowler
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Allow: /Nginx
# Nginx: return 403 to Barkrowler
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(Barkrowler)") {
return 403;
}Apache
# Apache .htaccess: return 403 to Barkrowler
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (Barkrowler) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]Cloudflare WAF
# Cloudflare > Security > WAF > Custom rule, action: Block
(http.user_agent contains "Barkrowler")How to verify real Barkrowler traffic
Reverse DNS check: look up the request IP, confirm the hostname ends in babbar.eu, then look up that hostname and confirm it returns the same IP.
# 1. Reverse lookup: the hostname must end in babbar.eu
host REQUEST_IP
# 2. Forward lookup: must return the same REQUEST_IP
host HOSTNAME_FROM_STEP_1How to find Barkrowler in your server logs
Search the web server access log for the token. The command below counts Barkrowler requests per URL on Nginx or Apache.
grep -i "Barkrowler" 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.
Barkrowler FAQ
Barkrowler uses the robots.txt token "Barkrowler". Babbar does not publish a full user-agent string, so match the token inside the User-Agent header.
Yes. Babbar states that Barkrowler follows robots.txt rules written for the "Barkrowler" 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: Barkrowler" followed by "Disallow: /". The token is case-insensitive. Changes can take up to 24 hours to be picked up.
Yes. Run a reverse DNS lookup on the request IP; a real Barkrowler request resolves to babbar.eu, and a forward lookup of that hostname returns the same IP.
Search your server access log for "Barkrowler", for example with: grep -i "Barkrowler" access.log. The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits per AI bot from an uploaded log file.
Sources: Babbar 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.
