MJ12bot
CautionUser-agent: MJ12bot
Category: SEO Tools
SEO impact if blocked: 2/10
Majestic
1 crawler operated by Majestic
https://majestic.com/Who Majestic is, for site owners
Majestic operates 1 crawler in our directory, filed under SEO Tools. Its crawl behaviour is rated caution.
Blocking Majestic carries an SEO impact score of 2/10. Blocking impact is rated: Low - No SEO ranking impact.
Our recommendation for Majestic: Consider blocking based on your content strategy.
Majestic at a glance
| Operator | Majestic |
|---|---|
| Crawler in directory | 1 |
| Categories | SEO Tools |
| SEO impact if blocked | 2/10 |
| Crawl behaviour | 1 rated caution |
| Website | majestic.com |
| Official crawler docs | Majestic crawler documentation |
Crawler operated by Majestic
What Majestic's crawlers are for
Majestic runs 1 crawler in our database. Grouped by the job each one does:
- a utility crawler:
MJ12bot
The highest-priority token is Tier 4. That makes Majestic a lower-priority operator for most sites: worth a deliberate decision, but rarely the one that decides your visibility.
How site owners treat Majestic
How often site owners write rules for Majestic's tokens, from our own robots.txt study of the Tranco top 10,000:
| Token | Files naming it | Files blocking it |
|---|---|---|
MJ12bot | 273 (4.9%) | 455 (8.1%) |
A Majestic token can be blocked without being named, through a User-agent: * group with Disallow: /, so its blocking share can be higher than its naming share.
All counts come from 5,583 valid files fetched October 20, 2026.
Writing one policy for Majestic
A robots.txt file cannot say "Majestic"; it can only name Majestic's tokens, one group at a time. With a single token, one group is the whole policy.
# One token controls everything Majestic fetches through it
User-agent: MJ12bot
Disallow: /private/
Allow: /- Decide per job, not per company. Training, search and user-triggered fetching have different trade-offs, even from the same operator.
- Name every token you mean. A token you leave out follows
User-agent: *. - Repeat shared rules. A named group ignores the
*group, so copy anyDisallowlines you still want it to obey. - Verify from outside. Run the free AI crawler check after any change to see the result for each Majestic token, including firewall refusals.
Test yourself: does User-agent: Majestic block all of Majestic's crawlers?
No. robots.txt matches crawler tokens, not company names. Use the token MJ12bot.
Test yourself: if you block one Majestic token, are the others blocked too?
No. Each token is read separately. Blocking one leaves the rest following whatever group applies to them.
Each Majestic crawler, explained
A one-paragraph brief for every Majestic token in our database, covering what it does, how it treats robots.txt and how often large sites write rules for it:
- MJ12bot (
MJ12bot, Tier 4): a utility crawler that checks pages for an SEO, uptime or analytics service. Rated caution. MJ12bot's operator does not clearly document how it treats robots.txt. Write the MJ12bot rule anyway, then confirm in your logs that its requests stop. 4.9% of top-site robots.txt files name it and 8.1% block it.
Common mistakes with Majestic's crawlers
The errors we see most often with Majestic's crawlers in the files and firewalls we test:
- Treating Majestic's crawlers as an AI or search crawler. Blocking it has little effect on visibility; decide based on load and what it does with your data.
- Relying on robots.txt alone when Majestic's crawlers is rated caution or aggressive. Back the rule with a server-side block.
- Blocking Majestic's crawlers by IP alone. Ranges change; match the token and verify with logs.
All three hide inside a file that looks correct, so check Majestic's crawlers from outside after every change.
What our own data shows about Majestic
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 Majestic's marketing. Majestic has one token in our database, so the whole picture fits in one place.
MJ12bot in our records
We first recorded MJ12bot on March 17, 2026. Majestic documents it on mj12bot.com, and we recheck that page before each release. Between our scans of October 17, 2026 and October 20, 2026, files naming MJ12bot went from 267 to 273 (+6) and files blocking it from 435 to 455 (+20), so more sites wrote a rule for MJ12bot and more of those rules block it.
Among the 19 SEO tools in our database, MJ12bot sits ninth by priority (Tier 4), level with AhrefsBot, AhrefsSiteAudit, AwarioBot, AwarioRssBot. 3 of the 19 share its caution rating. Other operators with a crawler that checks pages for an SEO, uptime or analytics service: OAI-AdsBot (OpenAI, Tier 2), AdIdxBot (Microsoft, Tier 3), AdsBot-Google (Google, Tier 3), AdsBot-Google-Mobile (Google, Tier 3), Baiduspider-ads (Baidu, Tier 3). A policy for MJ12bot is usually a policy for these too.
A decision record for MJ12bot
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 MJ12bot entry reads:
- Operator and job: Majestic; it checks pages for an SEO, uptime or analytics service.
- Priority and behaviour: Tier 4, rated caution, blocking impact low.
- Suggested starting point: Allow by default; revisit if it costs you bandwidth.
- Enforcement: MJ12bot's operator does not clearly document how it treats robots.txt. Write the MJ12bot rule anyway, then confirm in your logs that its requests stop.
User-agent: MJ12bot
Allow: /Paste the line into the validator with one of your own URLs before it goes live. Revisit the MJ12bot entry sooner than most: a caution rating means Majestic traffic deserves a monthly look at your logs.
Checking MJ12bot on your own site
Because Majestic runs only MJ12bot in our records, one check covers the whole operator. Search your access logs for the string MJ12bot over the last 30 days, note how many requests it made and which paths it asked for, then compare that with what your robots.txt allows. Match the requests against what Majestic publishes about the crawler, since that page is the only authority on its behaviour. A Tier 4 crawler rated caution rarely needs more than a quarterly look, and our log checker does the counting for you.
How top sites treat Majestic's crawlers
From our robots.txt study of the Tranco top 10,000 (5,583 valid files, fetched October 20, 2026):
MJ12bot, the only one tracked among the Majestic's crawlers tokens: blocked in 8.1% of files (223 with its own group, 232 throughUser-agent: *), more often by the top 1,000 (11.6%) than the long tail (7.7%).
For scale, 20.1% of all files block at least one AI training crawler. None of the tokens for Majestic's crawlers comes close to that rate, so blocking them is still a minority choice.
More questions about Majestic
- Will blocking Majestic affect my Google rankings?
- Only if one of its tokens is a Google search crawler. None of Majestic's tokens are Googlebot, so classic Google rankings are unaffected.
- How quickly does a robots.txt change take effect for Majestic?
- 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 Majestic on some sections and block it on others?
- Yes. Inside the group for
MJ12bot, addDisallowlines for the paths to keep private andAllowlines for exceptions. The longest matching rule wins. - Does blocking Majestic delete content it already collected?
- No. robots.txt only controls future visits. For content already collected, check whether Majestic offers a removal or opt-out process.
- Is a firewall block better than robots.txt for Majestic?
- 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.
A five-minute Majestic review
- Confirm the token. Compare the user-agent in your logs with the tokens listed on this page. A close spelling is not the same crawler.
- Decide the outcome per crawler. Use the briefs above to choose allow, limit or block for each token.
- Write the group. Add or edit one
User-agentgroup per decision and repeat any shared rules inside it. - Publish and wait. Allow about a day for crawlers to fetch the new file.
- Confirm the result. Check your logs, then run the crawlability checker for AI search to see the outcome from outside, including any firewall layer.
How to block or allow Majestic in robots.txt
This rule covers the single crawler Majestic operates. Add it to the robots.txt file at the root of your domain.
Block Majestic completely
User-agent: MJ12bot
Disallow: /
Allow Majestic explicitly
User-agent: MJ12bot
Allow: /
These Majestic rules ask; they do not enforce. If a Majestic token ignores them, block it at the server or CDN. Paths are case-sensitive, and each rule matches the token, not the full user-agent string.
Frequently asked questions about Majestic
What crawler does Majestic run?
Majestic operates 1 crawler in our directory: MJ12bot (user-agent MJ12bot).
Should I block Majestic?
Consider blocking based on your content strategy. The SEO impact score for blocking is 2/10, where 10 means blocking costs you the most visibility.
How do I block Majestic in robots.txt?
Add the following to robots.txt at your domain root: User-agent: MJ12bot then Disallow: /.
Does blocking Majestic hurt my search rankings?
Blocking impact is rated: Low - No SEO ranking impact. Google's own ranking crawler is Googlebot, which this operator does not run, so blocking Majestic does not by itself remove you from Google's index. What it can change is whether AI assistants and analytics tools can read your pages.