Keenable

Common mistakes with Keenable's crawlers

The errors we see most often with Keenable's crawlers in the files and firewalls we test:

1. Blocking Keenable's crawlers while trying to stop AI training. Retrieval crawlers fetch pages so answers can cite them; blocking it can remove you from those answers without affecting training.
2. Letting a firewall or bot-fight mode refuse Keenable's crawlers while robots.txt allows it. The file looks right, but the crawler still gets a 403 or a challenge page.
3. Forgetting that once a User-agent: KeenableBot group exists, Keenable's crawlers ignores every rule under User-agent: *.

All three hide inside a file that looks correct, so check Keenable's crawlers from outside after every change.

Spotting Keenable in your logs

robots.txt says what Keenable Search and Keenable user fetch may do; your access logs show what they actually did.

Count requests

On a server with standard Nginx or Apache logs, this counts matching requests per day (adjust the log path for your host):

grep -iE "KeenableBot|Keenable-User" /var/log/nginx/access.log \
  | awk '{print $4}' | cut -d: -f1 | sort | uniq -c

And this shows which paths it requested most, which is the quickest way to see whether your Disallow lines are being respected:

grep -iE "KeenableBot|Keenable-User" /var/log/nginx/access.log \
  | awk '{print $7}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20

Check the requests are genuine

Anyone can send these user-agents, so confirm the source before acting on a match:

• KeenableBot: compare each address with the ranges at app.keenable.ai/bot/keenablebot.json. A request claiming to be Keenable Search from outside them is not genuine. Check it separately from Keenable user fetch.
• Keenable-User: compare each address with the ranges at app.keenable.ai/bot/keenable-user.json. A request claiming to be Keenable user fetch from outside them is not genuine. Check it separately from Keenable Search.

What our own data shows about Keenable

Everything below comes from the AI Crawler Check bot database and our two most recent robots.txt scans of the Tranco top 10,000, not from Keenable's marketing. It covers 2 Keenable tokens in turn.

KeenableBot in our records

We first recorded KeenableBot on October 19, 2026. Keenable documents it on app.keenable.ai, and we recheck that page before each release. No file in our top-10,000 scans names KeenableBot, so any rule you write for it puts you ahead of almost every large site.

Among the 104 AI and LLM crawlers in our database, KeenableBot sits 53th by priority (Tier 2), level with AddSearchBot, AI2Bot, AI2Bot-DeepResearchEval, aiHitBot. 81 of the 104 share its safe rating. Other operators with a crawler that builds a search or answer index: AddSearchBot (AddSearch, Tier 2), AIWebIndex (Lyrenth, Tier 2), atlassian-bot (Atlassian, Tier 2), AzureAI-SearchBot (Microsoft, Tier 2), Cloudflare-AI-Search (Cloudflare, Tier 2). A policy for KeenableBot is usually a policy for these too.

A decision record for KeenableBot

Teams that review crawlers once a quarter keep one short entry per token, so anyone can see why a rule exists and when it was last checked. Filled in from our data, the KeenableBot entry reads:

• Operator and job: Keenable; it builds a search or answer index.
• Priority and behaviour: Tier 2, rated safe, blocking impact low.
• Suggested starting point: Allow, and watch it in your logs.
• Enforcement: KeenableBot's operator says it follows robots.txt, so a correctly written KeenableBot group is enough to control it.

User-agent: KeenableBot
Allow: /

Paste the line into the validator with one of your own URLs before it goes live. Revisit the KeenableBot entry whenever Keenable announces a change, because a Tier 2 crawler affects visibility directly.

Keenable-User in our records

We first recorded Keenable-User on October 19, 2026. Keenable documents it on app.keenable.ai, and we recheck that page before each release. No file in our top-10,000 scans names Keenable-User, so any rule you write for it puts you ahead of almost every large site.

Among the 104 AI and LLM crawlers in our database, Keenable-User sits 98th by priority (Tier 3), level with AIWebIndex-Agent, alphalens-bot, amazon-QBusiness, Anomura. 81 of the 104 share its safe rating. Other operators with a crawler that fetches a page when a person asks an assistant or app to open it: ChatGPT Agent (OpenAI, Tier 1), ChatGPT Operator (OpenAI, Tier 1), ChatGPT-User (OpenAI, Tier 1), ChatGPT-User/2.0 (OpenAI, Tier 1), Claude-SearchBot (Anthropic, Tier 1). A policy for Keenable-User is usually a policy for these too.

A decision record for Keenable-User

Teams that review crawlers once a quarter keep one short entry per token, so anyone can see why a rule exists and when it was last checked. Filled in from our data, the Keenable-User entry reads:

• Operator and job: Keenable; it fetches a page when a person asks an assistant or app to open it.
• Priority and behaviour: Tier 3, rated safe, blocking impact low.
• Suggested starting point: Allow by default; revisit if it costs you bandwidth.
• Enforcement: Keenable-User's operator says it follows robots.txt, so a correctly written Keenable-User group is enough to control it.

User-agent: Keenable-User
Allow: /

Paste the line into the validator with one of your own URLs before it goes live. Revisit the Keenable-User entry once a quarter, or when Keenable publishes a new token next to it.

How top sites treat Keenable's crawlers

From our robots.txt study of the Tranco top 10,000 (5,583 valid files, fetched October 20, 2026):

None of the tokens for Keenable's crawlers is tracked by name in our study. For scale, 20.1% of top-site files block at least one AI training crawler and 4.3% refuse every unnamed crawler with User-agent: * and Disallow: /, which would catch Keenable's crawlers too.

More questions about Keenable

Will blocking Keenable affect my Google rankings?

Only if one of its tokens is a Google search crawler. None of Keenable's tokens are Googlebot, so classic Google rankings are unaffected.

How quickly does a robots.txt change take effect for Keenable?

Crawlers cache robots.txt, commonly for up to a day. Expect a change to apply within about 24 hours, and confirm it in your logs.

Can I allow Keenable on some sections and block it on others?

Yes. Inside the group for KeenableBot, add Disallow lines for the paths to keep private and Allow lines for exceptions. The longest matching rule wins.

Does blocking Keenable delete content it already collected?

No. robots.txt only controls future visits. For content already collected, check whether Keenable offers a removal or opt-out process.

Is a firewall block better than robots.txt for Keenable?

A firewall enforces the decision, while robots.txt asks politely. Many operators recommend robots.txt because blocking their IPs can stop them reading your rules at all. Use robots.txt first, and add a firewall rule only if requests continue.