Cohere AI: User Agent, robots.txt Rules & Safety Rating

Q: What user-agent string does Cohere AI use?

Cohere AI is reported to identify itself with cohere-ai. That spelling comes from ai.robots.txt, not from Cohere, which has not published crawler documentation naming it. Use it in robots.txt as the best available match, and treat a request carrying it as a clue rather than proof of who sent it.

Q: Is Cohere AI safe?

Cohere AI is rated Safe in this directory, meaning there are no credible public reports of abusive crawling under this name. It is a Reported token: Cohere has not published documentation for it, so its purpose, crawl rate and robots.txt behaviour are not confirmed by the operator, and anyone can send the same user-agent string. Allow or block it on its stated purpose, and back the robots.txt rule with a firewall rule if the traffic matters to you.

Q: Will blocking Cohere AI hurt my SEO?

✅ No SEO Impact - Blocking Cohere AI does not affect your rankings in Google, Bing, or any other search engine. Cohere AI is an AI crawler, not a traditional search indexer. You can freely block it via User-agent / Disallow: / without any SEO penalty.

Q: How do I block Cohere AI in robots.txt?

Add the following lines to your /robots.txt file: User-agent: cohere-ai Disallow: / This instructs Cohere AI not to crawl any path on your site. To block only specific sections, replace / with the path (e.g., Disallow: /blog/).

Q: How do I verify if Cohere AI is crawling my site?

Search your access logs for cohere-ai (for example grep -i "cohere-ai" /var/log/nginx/access.log). Because the operator publishes no IP ranges or reverse-DNS pattern, a match shows that something used the name, not that Cohere sent it.

Quick Facts

User-Agent:: cohere-ai
Category:: AI & LLM Bots
Operator:: Cohere
Safety:: Safe
Blocking Impact:: Low - No SEO ranking impact
SEO Impact Score:: 2/10
Official docs:: None published by Cohere
Named by:: ai.robots.txt

Reported, not operator documented

Cohere has not published a crawler page that names cohere-ai. It is listed here because a credible public source does: ai.robots.txt. Reported Cohere retrieval token. Cohere publishes no crawler page.

What that means for you: the robots.txt rule on this page is the best available spelling, and a well-behaved crawler using this string will honour it, but there is no vendor statement of purpose, crawl rate or robots.txt compliance to rely on. Treat a matching request in your logs as a detection clue, not proof of who sent it, and combine the rule with a firewall rule if the traffic matters to you. If the operator publishes documentation, this profile moves to Official docs.

What is Cohere AI?

Cohere AI is a dual-purpose AI crawler operated by Cohere. It both indexes content for AI search answers and may retrieve pages on demand for user queries. Allowing it can improve your visibility inside Cohere's AI answers.

Cohere AI is a dual-purpose AI crawler operated by Cohere. It both indexes content for AI search answers and may retrieve pages on demand for user queries. Allowing it can improve your visibility inside Cohere's AI answers.
Cohere AI uses the user-agent token cohere-ai. You can control it via robots.txt, meta tags (noai), or the emerging llms.txt standard. Robots.txt is voluntary; for hard enforcement, combine it with server-level IP blocking.

What happens if you block Cohere AI?

✅ No SEO Impact - Blocking Cohere AI does not affect your rankings in Google, Bing, or any other search engine. Cohere AI is an AI crawler, not a traditional search indexer. You can freely block it via User-agent / Disallow: / without any SEO penalty.

Generally safe to allow; provides legitimate crawling value.

How to block Cohere AI with robots.txt

<code>User-agent: cohere-ai</code> - Matching is case-insensitive. Robots.txt is fetched from the root of each subdomain separately.

Block completely (robots.txt)

User-agent: cohere-ai
Disallow: /

Allow all (robots.txt)

User-agent: cohere-ai
Allow: /

Block private only (robots.txt)

User-agent: cohere-ai
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /admin/
Allow: /

Nginx server block

# Nginx: Hard-block Cohere AI
if ($http_user_agent ~* "cohere-ai") {
    return 403 "Bot blocked";
}

Apache .htaccess

# Apache: Hard-block Cohere AI
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent "cohere-ai" bad_bot
Order Allow,Deny
Allow from all
Deny from env=bad_bot

Meta robots tag

X-Robots-Tag header

X-Robots-Tag: noindex, nofollow

Is Cohere AI safe to allow?

Cohere AI is rated Safe in this directory, meaning there are no credible public reports of abusive crawling under this name. It is a Reported token: Cohere has not published documentation for it, so its purpose, crawl rate and robots.txt behaviour are not confirmed by the operator, and anyone can send the same user-agent string. Allow or block it on its stated purpose, and back the robots.txt rule with a firewall rule if the traffic matters to you.

Cohere publishes no IP ranges or reverse-DNS pattern for Cohere AI, so the user-agent string cannot be verified. Rate-limit unusual volume instead of trusting the name.

What does Cohere AI do?

Understanding Cohere AI's purpose helps you decide whether to allow or block it.

Indexes content for AI search answers
Retrieves pages on demand for user queries
Can surface your content as AI citations
Allowing it improves AI-answer visibility
robots.txt behaviour not documented by the operator

Frequently Asked Questions

What user-agent string does Cohere AI use?

Cohere AI is reported to identify itself with cohere-ai. That spelling comes from ai.robots.txt, not from Cohere, which has not published crawler documentation naming it. Use it in robots.txt as the best available match, and treat a request carrying it as a clue rather than proof of who sent it.

Is Cohere AI safe?

Cohere AI is rated Safe in this directory, meaning there are no credible public reports of abusive crawling under this name. It is a Reported token: Cohere has not published documentation for it, so its purpose, crawl rate and robots.txt behaviour are not confirmed by the operator, and anyone can send the same user-agent string. Allow or block it on its stated purpose, and back the robots.txt rule with a firewall rule if the traffic matters to you.

Will blocking Cohere AI hurt my SEO?

✅ No SEO Impact - Blocking Cohere AI does not affect your rankings in Google, Bing, or any other search engine. Cohere AI is an AI crawler, not a traditional search indexer. You can freely block it via User-agent / Disallow: / without any SEO penalty.

How do I block Cohere AI in robots.txt?

Add the following lines to your /robots.txt file:

User-agent: cohere-ai
Disallow: /

This instructs Cohere AI not to crawl any path on your site. To block only specific sections, replace / with the path (e.g., Disallow: /blog/).

Does Cohere AI respect robots.txt?

Not documented. Cohere has published no statement that Cohere AI reads robots.txt. A rule for cohere-ai will stop a client that chooses to honour it; for enforcement, add a firewall or CDN rule as well.

How do I verify if Cohere AI is crawling my site?

Search your access logs for cohere-ai (for example grep -i "cohere-ai" /var/log/nginx/access.log). Because the operator publishes no IP ranges or reverse-DNS pattern, a match shows that something used the name, not that Cohere sent it.