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