SiteAuditBot user agent
Operated by Semrush
SiteAuditBot is the Semrush crawler that checks a site for SEO and technical issues in the Site Audit tool.
The SiteAuditBot bot at a glance
- SiteAuditBot is operated by Semrush and fetches pages to power a specific product feature.
- The robots.txt token for SiteAuditBot is SiteAuditBot.
- Blocking an SEO tool crawler has no effect on Google or Bing rankings.
- SiteAuditBot robots.txt support: Yes.
- Recommendation for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Allow.
What is SiteAuditBot?
SiteAuditBot runs when a Semrush user sets up a Site Audit project for a domain.
Allow it on your own site if you audit it with Semrush.
Should you block SiteAuditBot?
Allow SiteAuditBot unless it causes a measurable load problem.
| 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 | Allow |
How to block or allow SiteAuditBot
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 SiteAuditBot is matched case-insensitively.
robots.txt: block
# Block SiteAuditBot
User-agent: SiteAuditBot
Disallow: /robots.txt: allow
# Allow SiteAuditBot
User-agent: SiteAuditBot
Allow: /robots.txt: partial
# Keep SiteAuditBot out of private areas only
User-agent: SiteAuditBot
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Allow: /Nginx
# Nginx: return 403 to SiteAuditBot
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(SiteAuditBot)") {
return 403;
}Apache
# Apache .htaccess: return 403 to SiteAuditBot
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (SiteAuditBot) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]Cloudflare WAF
# Cloudflare > Security > WAF > Custom rule, action: Block
(http.user_agent contains "SiteAuditBot")How to verify real SiteAuditBot traffic
Semrush publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for SiteAuditBot, 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 SiteAuditBot in your server logs
Search the web server access log for the token. The command below counts SiteAuditBot requests per URL on Nginx or Apache.
grep -i "SiteAuditBot" 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.
SiteAuditBot FAQ
SiteAuditBot uses the robots.txt token "SiteAuditBot". Semrush does not publish a full user-agent string, so match the token inside the User-Agent header.
Yes. Semrush states that SiteAuditBot follows robots.txt rules written for the "SiteAuditBot" 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: SiteAuditBot" followed by "Disallow: /". The token is case-insensitive. Changes can take up to 24 hours to be picked up.
Not reliably. Semrush publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for SiteAuditBot, so anyone can send the same user agent. Rate-limit unusual volume instead of trusting the name.
Search your server access log for "SiteAuditBot", for example with: grep -i "SiteAuditBot" access.log. The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits per AI bot from an uploaded log file.
Sources: Semrush 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.
