TTD-Content user agent
Operated by The Trade Desk
TTD-Content is the content crawler of The Trade Desk, a programmatic advertising platform.
The TTD-Content bot at a glance
- TTD-Content is operated by The Trade Desk and checks landing pages for an advertising platform.
- The robots.txt token for TTD-Content is TTD-Content.
- Blocking a platform fetcher has no effect on organic search rankings.
- TTD-Content robots.txt support: Not documented.
- Recommendation for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Your choice.
What is TTD-Content?
TTD-Content reads pages to understand where ads bought through The Trade Desk would run.
Ad-supported publishers often see it in their logs.
Should you block TTD-Content?
Blocking TTD-Content is a business decision: it protects your content but can lower how well AI products know your brand.
| 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 | Your choice |
How to block or allow TTD-Content
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 TTD-Content is matched case-insensitively. robots.txt alone may not stop TTD-Content, so add the Nginx, Apache or Cloudflare rule as well.
robots.txt: block
# Block TTD-Content
User-agent: TTD-Content
Disallow: /robots.txt: allow
# Allow TTD-Content
User-agent: TTD-Content
Allow: /robots.txt: partial
# Keep TTD-Content out of private areas only
User-agent: TTD-Content
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Allow: /Nginx
# Nginx: return 403 to TTD-Content
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(TTD\-Content)") {
return 403;
}Apache
# Apache .htaccess: return 403 to TTD-Content
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (TTD\-Content) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]Cloudflare WAF
# Cloudflare > Security > WAF > Custom rule, action: Block
(http.user_agent contains "TTD-Content")How to verify real TTD-Content traffic
The Trade Desk publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for TTD-Content, 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 TTD-Content in your server logs
Search the web server access log for the token. The command below counts TTD-Content requests per URL on Nginx or Apache.
grep -i "TTD-Content" 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.
TTD-Content user agent string
The full user agent The Trade Desk publishes for TTD-Content. Version numbers such as Chrome/W.X.Y.Z change over time, so match the token, not the whole string.
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; TTD-Content; +https://www.thetradedesk.com/general/ttd-content)TTD-Content FAQ
TTD-Content identifies itself with the robots.txt token "TTD-Content". A typical request header reads: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; TTD-Content; +https://www.thetradedesk.com/general/ttd-content)
The Trade Desk has not documented how TTD-Content 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: TTD-Content" followed by "Disallow: /". The token is case-insensitive. Changes can take up to 24 hours to be picked up.
Not reliably. The Trade Desk publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for TTD-Content, so anyone can send the same user agent. Rate-limit unusual volume instead of trusting the name.
Search your server access log for "TTD-Content", for example with: grep -i "TTD-Content" 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.
