ApifyWebsiteContentCrawler user agent
Operated by Apify
ApifyWebsiteContentCrawler is the user agent of Apify's Website Content Crawler, used to feed web content into AI and LLM apps.
The ApifyWebsiteContentCrawler bot at a glance
- ApifyWebsiteContentCrawler is operated by Apify and fetches pages to power a specific product feature.
- The robots.txt token for ApifyWebsiteContentCrawler is ApifyWebsiteContentCrawler.
- Blocking an AI training crawler has no effect on Google or Bing rankings.
- ApifyWebsiteContentCrawler robots.txt support: Not documented.
- Recommendation for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Your choice.
What is ApifyWebsiteContentCrawler?
Apify customers run it to extract text from websites for chatbots and retrieval systems.
Its traffic is driven by Apify customers rather than by Apify itself.
Should you block ApifyWebsiteContentCrawler?
Blocking ApifyWebsiteContentCrawler 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 | Not documented |
| Recommendation | Your choice |
How to block or allow ApifyWebsiteContentCrawler
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 ApifyWebsiteContentCrawler is matched case-insensitively. robots.txt alone may not stop ApifyWebsiteContentCrawler, so add the Nginx, Apache or Cloudflare rule as well.
robots.txt: block
# Block ApifyWebsiteContentCrawler
User-agent: ApifyWebsiteContentCrawler
Disallow: /robots.txt: allow
# Allow ApifyWebsiteContentCrawler
User-agent: ApifyWebsiteContentCrawler
Allow: /robots.txt: partial
# Keep ApifyWebsiteContentCrawler out of private areas only
User-agent: ApifyWebsiteContentCrawler
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Allow: /Nginx
# Nginx: return 403 to ApifyWebsiteContentCrawler
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(ApifyWebsiteContentCrawler)") {
return 403;
}Apache
# Apache .htaccess: return 403 to ApifyWebsiteContentCrawler
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (ApifyWebsiteContentCrawler) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]Cloudflare WAF
# Cloudflare > Security > WAF > Custom rule, action: Block
(http.user_agent contains "ApifyWebsiteContentCrawler")How to verify real ApifyWebsiteContentCrawler traffic
Apify publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for ApifyWebsiteContentCrawler, 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 ApifyWebsiteContentCrawler in your server logs
Search the web server access log for the token. The command below counts ApifyWebsiteContentCrawler requests per URL on Nginx or Apache.
grep -i "ApifyWebsiteContentCrawler" 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.
ApifyWebsiteContentCrawler FAQ
ApifyWebsiteContentCrawler uses the robots.txt token "ApifyWebsiteContentCrawler". Apify does not publish a full user-agent string, so match the token inside the User-Agent header.
Apify has not documented how ApifyWebsiteContentCrawler treats robots.txt. Add a robots.txt rule and back it with a server rule if the traffic matters to you.
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: ApifyWebsiteContentCrawler" followed by "Disallow: /". The token is case-insensitive. Changes can take up to 24 hours to be picked up.
Not reliably. Apify publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for ApifyWebsiteContentCrawler, so anyone can send the same user agent. Rate-limit unusual volume instead of trusting the name.
Search your server access log for "ApifyWebsiteContentCrawler", for example with: grep -i "ApifyWebsiteContentCrawler" 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.
