SERankingBacklinksBot user agent
Operated by SE Ranking
SERankingBacklinksBot is SE Ranking's crawler for its backlink database.
The SERankingBacklinksBot bot at a glance
- SERankingBacklinksBot is operated by SE Ranking and crawls web pages for a search engine index, and fetches pages to power a specific product feature.
- The robots.txt token for SERankingBacklinksBot is SERankingBacklinksBot.
- Blocking an SEO tool crawler has no effect on Google or Bing rankings.
- SERankingBacklinksBot robots.txt support: Not documented.
- Recommendation for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Your choice.
What is SERankingBacklinksBot?
SERankingBacklinksBot collects links shown in SE Ranking’s backlink checker.
SE Ranking has moved its former bot page.
Should you block SERankingBacklinksBot?
Blocking SERankingBacklinksBot 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 | Not documented |
| Recommendation | Your choice |
How to block or allow SERankingBacklinksBot
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 SERankingBacklinksBot is matched case-insensitively. robots.txt alone may not stop SERankingBacklinksBot, so add the Nginx, Apache or Cloudflare rule as well.
robots.txt: block
# Block SERankingBacklinksBot
User-agent: SERankingBacklinksBot
Disallow: /robots.txt: allow
# Allow SERankingBacklinksBot
User-agent: SERankingBacklinksBot
Allow: /robots.txt: partial
# Keep SERankingBacklinksBot out of private areas only
User-agent: SERankingBacklinksBot
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Allow: /Nginx
# Nginx: return 403 to SERankingBacklinksBot
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(SERankingBacklinksBot)") {
return 403;
}Apache
# Apache .htaccess: return 403 to SERankingBacklinksBot
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (SERankingBacklinksBot) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]Cloudflare WAF
# Cloudflare > Security > WAF > Custom rule, action: Block
(http.user_agent contains "SERankingBacklinksBot")How to verify real SERankingBacklinksBot traffic
SE Ranking publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for SERankingBacklinksBot, 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 SERankingBacklinksBot in your server logs
Search the web server access log for the token. The command below counts SERankingBacklinksBot requests per URL on Nginx or Apache.
grep -i "SERankingBacklinksBot" 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.
SERankingBacklinksBot user agent string
The full user agent SE Ranking publishes for SERankingBacklinksBot. Version numbers such as Chrome/W.X.Y.Z change over time, so match the token, not the whole string.
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; SERankingBacklinksBot/1.0; +https://seranking.com/backlinks-crawler)SERankingBacklinksBot FAQ
SERankingBacklinksBot identifies itself with the robots.txt token "SERankingBacklinksBot". A typical request header reads: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; SERankingBacklinksBot/1.0; +https://seranking.com/backlinks-crawler)
SE Ranking has not documented how SERankingBacklinksBot treats robots.txt. Add a robots.txt rule and back it with a server rule if the traffic matters to you.
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: SERankingBacklinksBot" followed by "Disallow: /". The token is case-insensitive. Changes can take up to 24 hours to be picked up.
Not reliably. SE Ranking publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for SERankingBacklinksBot, so anyone can send the same user agent. Rate-limit unusual volume instead of trusting the name.
Search your server access log for "SERankingBacklinksBot", for example with: grep -i "SERankingBacklinksBot" 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.
