Screaming Frog SEO Spider user agent
Operated by Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a desktop SEO crawler; its default user agent appears when someone audits a site with it.
The Screaming Frog SEO Spider bot at a glance
- Screaming Frog SEO Spider is operated by Screaming Frog and fetches pages to power a specific product feature.
- The robots.txt token for Screaming Frog SEO Spider is Screaming Frog SEO Spider.
- Blocking an SEO tool crawler has no effect on Google or Bing rankings.
- Screaming Frog SEO Spider robots.txt support: Yes.
- Recommendation for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Your choice.
What is Screaming Frog SEO Spider?
Screaming Frog runs on the user’s own computer, so requests come from that person’s IP, not from Screaming Frog.
Users can change the user agent, so the name in logs is only a hint.
Should you block Screaming Frog SEO Spider?
Blocking Screaming Frog SEO Spider 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 | Yes |
| Recommendation | Your choice |
How to block or allow Screaming Frog SEO Spider
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 Screaming Frog SEO Spider is matched case-insensitively.
robots.txt: block
# Block Screaming Frog SEO Spider
User-agent: Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Disallow: /robots.txt: allow
# Allow Screaming Frog SEO Spider
User-agent: Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Allow: /robots.txt: partial
# Keep Screaming Frog SEO Spider out of private areas only
User-agent: Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Allow: /Nginx
# Nginx: return 403 to Screaming Frog SEO Spider
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(Screaming Frog SEO Spider)") {
return 403;
}Apache
# Apache .htaccess: return 403 to Screaming Frog SEO Spider
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (Screaming Frog SEO Spider) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]Cloudflare WAF
# Cloudflare > Security > WAF > Custom rule, action: Block
(http.user_agent contains "Screaming Frog SEO Spider")How to verify real Screaming Frog SEO Spider traffic
Screaming Frog publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for Screaming Frog SEO Spider, 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 Screaming Frog SEO Spider in your server logs
Search the web server access log for the token. The command below counts Screaming Frog SEO Spider requests per URL on Nginx or Apache.
grep -i "Screaming Frog SEO Spider" 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.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider user agent string
The full user agent Screaming Frog publishes for Screaming Frog SEO Spider. Version numbers such as Chrome/W.X.Y.Z change over time, so match the token, not the whole string.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider/5.1Screaming Frog SEO Spider FAQ
Screaming Frog SEO Spider identifies itself with the robots.txt token "Screaming Frog SEO Spider". A typical request header reads: Screaming Frog SEO Spider/5.1
Yes. Screaming Frog states that Screaming Frog SEO Spider follows robots.txt rules written for the "Screaming Frog SEO Spider" 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: Screaming Frog SEO Spider" followed by "Disallow: /". The token is case-insensitive. Changes can take up to 24 hours to be picked up.
Not reliably. Screaming Frog publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for Screaming Frog SEO Spider, so anyone can send the same user agent. Rate-limit unusual volume instead of trusting the name.
Search your server access log for "Screaming Frog SEO Spider", for example with: grep -i "Screaming Frog SEO Spider" access.log. The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits per AI bot from an uploaded log file.
Sources: Screaming Frog 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.
