CriteoBot user agent
Operated by Criteo
CriteoBot is the crawler of Criteo, a commerce media and retargeting ad platform.
The CriteoBot bot at a glance
- CriteoBot is operated by Criteo and checks landing pages for an advertising platform.
- The robots.txt token for CriteoBot is CriteoBot.
- Blocking a platform fetcher has no effect on organic search rankings.
- CriteoBot robots.txt support: Not documented.
- Recommendation for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Allow.
What is CriteoBot?
CriteoBot reads product and publisher pages for Criteo’s ad targeting.
Retailers and publishers working with Criteo should allow it.
Should you block CriteoBot?
Allow CriteoBot unless it causes a measurable load problem.
| Effect on search rankings | Blocking a platform fetcher has no effect on organic search rankings. |
|---|---|
| Effect on AI visibility | Blocking breaks the feature the fetcher serves, such as ad approval or feed updates. |
| Follows robots.txt | Not documented |
| Recommendation | Allow |
How to block or allow CriteoBot
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 CriteoBot is matched case-insensitively. robots.txt alone may not stop CriteoBot, so add the Nginx, Apache or Cloudflare rule as well.
robots.txt: block
# Block CriteoBot
User-agent: CriteoBot
Disallow: /robots.txt: allow
# Allow CriteoBot
User-agent: CriteoBot
Allow: /robots.txt: partial
# Keep CriteoBot out of private areas only
User-agent: CriteoBot
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Allow: /Nginx
# Nginx: return 403 to CriteoBot
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(CriteoBot)") {
return 403;
}Apache
# Apache .htaccess: return 403 to CriteoBot
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (CriteoBot) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]Cloudflare WAF
# Cloudflare > Security > WAF > Custom rule, action: Block
(http.user_agent contains "CriteoBot")How to verify real CriteoBot traffic
Criteo publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for CriteoBot, 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 CriteoBot in your server logs
Search the web server access log for the token. The command below counts CriteoBot requests per URL on Nginx or Apache.
grep -i "CriteoBot" 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.
CriteoBot user agent string
The full user agent Criteo publishes for CriteoBot. Version numbers such as Chrome/W.X.Y.Z change over time, so match the token, not the whole string.
CriteoBot/0.1 (+https://www.criteo.com/criteo-crawler/)CriteoBot FAQ
CriteoBot identifies itself with the robots.txt token "CriteoBot". A typical request header reads: CriteoBot/0.1 (+https://www.criteo.com/criteo-crawler/)
Criteo has not documented how CriteoBot treats robots.txt. Add a robots.txt rule and back it with a server rule if the traffic matters to you.
Blocking a platform fetcher has no effect on organic search rankings. Blocking breaks the feature the fetcher serves, such as ad approval or feed updates.
Add two lines to the robots.txt file at the root of each domain and subdomain: "User-agent: CriteoBot" followed by "Disallow: /". The token is case-insensitive. Changes can take up to 24 hours to be picked up.
Not reliably. Criteo publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for CriteoBot, so anyone can send the same user agent. Rate-limit unusual volume instead of trusting the name.
Search your server access log for "CriteoBot", for example with: grep -i "CriteoBot" 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.
