DotBot
CautionUser-agent: DotBot
Category: SEO Tools
SEO impact if blocked: 2/10
Moz
2 crawlers operated by Moz
https://moz.com/Who Moz is, for site owners
Moz operates 2 crawlers in our directory, filed under SEO Tools. Of those 2, 1 rated safe, 1 rated caution for crawl behaviour.
Blocking Moz carries an SEO impact score of 2/10 across its crawlers. The highest-impact crawler is Moz Campaign Crawler: Low - No SEO ranking impact.
Our recommendation for Moz, set by its least reassuring crawler (DotBot, rated caution): Consider blocking based on your content strategy.
Moz at a glance
| Operator | Moz |
|---|---|
| Crawlers in directory | 2 |
| Categories | SEO Tools |
| SEO impact if blocked | 2/10 |
| Crawl behaviour | 1 rated safe, 1 rated caution |
| Website | moz.com |
| Official crawler docs | Moz crawler documentation |
Crawlers operated by Moz
Moz crawlers
Moz crawlers use two tokens: DotBot, which builds the Moz link index, and rogerbot, which runs Moz Pro site crawls. Block or allow each by name.
User-agent: DotBot
User-agent: rogerbot
Disallow: /What Moz's crawlers are for
Moz runs 2 crawlers in our database. Grouped by the job each one does:
- a utility crawler:
DotBot,Rogerbot
The highest-priority token is Tier 4. That makes Moz a lower-priority operator for most sites: worth a deliberate decision, but rarely the one that decides your visibility.
How site owners treat Moz
How often site owners write rules for Moz's tokens, from our own robots.txt study of the Tranco top 10,000:
| Token | Files naming it | Files blocking it |
|---|---|---|
DotBot | 224 (4%) | 419 (7.5%) |
A Moz 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 Moz
A robots.txt file cannot say "Moz"; it can only name Moz's tokens, one group at a time. So "block Moz" really means naming each of its 2 tokens, and you can give them different answers.
# Allow Moz search and assistants, refuse training
User-agent: DotBot
Disallow: /
User-agent: DotBot
User-agent: Rogerbot
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 LLM crawler checker after any change to see the result for each Moz token, including firewall refusals.
Test yourself: does User-agent: Moz block all of Moz's crawlers?
No. robots.txt matches crawler tokens, not company names. Name each token: DotBot, Rogerbot.
Test yourself: if you block one Moz token, are the others blocked too?
No. Each token is read separately. Blocking one leaves the rest following whatever group applies to them.
Each Moz crawler, explained
A one-paragraph brief for every Moz token in our database, covering what it does, how it treats robots.txt and how often large sites write rules for it:
- DotBot (
DotBot, Tier 4): a utility crawler that checks pages for an SEO, uptime or analytics service. Rated caution. DotBot's operator does not clearly document how it treats robots.txt. Write the DotBot rule anyway, then confirm in your logs that its requests stop. 4% of top-site robots.txt files name it and 7.5% block it. - Moz Campaign Crawler (
Rogerbot, Tier 4): a utility crawler that checks pages for an SEO, uptime or analytics service. Rated safe. Moz Campaign Crawler's operator does not clearly document how it treats robots.txt. Write the Moz Campaign Crawler rule anyway, then confirm in your logs that its requests stop. Not tracked in our robots.txt study.
Common mistakes with Moz's crawlers
The errors we see most often with Moz's crawlers in the files and firewalls we test:
- Treating Moz'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 Moz's crawlers is rated caution or aggressive. Back the rule with a server-side block.
- Blocking Moz'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 Moz's crawlers from outside after every change.
Spotting Moz in your logs
robots.txt says what DotBot and Moz Campaign Crawler 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 "DotBot|Rogerbot" /var/log/nginx/access.log \
| awk '{print $4}' | cut -d: -f1 | sort | uniq -cAnd this shows which paths it requested most, which is the quickest way to see whether your Disallow lines are being respected:
grep -iE "DotBot|Rogerbot" /var/log/nginx/access.log \
| awk '{print $7}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20Check the requests are genuine
Anyone can send these user-agents, so confirm the source before acting on a match:
DotBot: we hold no published IP list, so use reverse DNS where Moz documents a hostname and treat an unverifiable DotBot request with caution. Check it separately from Moz Campaign Crawler.Rogerbot: we hold no published IP list, so use reverse DNS where Moz documents a hostname and treat an unverifiable Moz Campaign Crawler request with caution. Check it separately from DotBot.
What our own data shows about Moz
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 Moz's marketing. It covers 2 Moz tokens in turn.
DotBot in our records
We first recorded DotBot on March 17, 2026. Moz documents it on moz.com, and we recheck that page before each release. Between our scans of October 17, 2026 and October 20, 2026, files naming DotBot went from 215 to 224 (+9) and files blocking it from 395 to 419 (+24), so more sites wrote a rule for DotBot and more of those rules block it.
Among the 19 SEO tools in our database, DotBot sits eighth 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 DotBot is usually a policy for these too.
A decision record for DotBot
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 DotBot entry reads:
- Operator and job: Moz; 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: DotBot's operator does not clearly document how it treats robots.txt. Write the DotBot rule anyway, then confirm in your logs that its requests stop.
User-agent: DotBot
Allow: /Paste the line into the validator with one of your own URLs before it goes live. Revisit the DotBot entry sooner than most: a caution rating means Moz traffic deserves a monthly look at your logs.
Rogerbot in our records
We first recorded Rogerbot on September 22, 2026. Moz documents it on moz.com, and we recheck that page before each release. No file in our top-10,000 scans names Rogerbot, so any rule you write for it puts you ahead of almost every large site.
Among the 19 SEO tools in our database, Rogerbot sits 12th by priority (Tier 4), level with AhrefsBot, AhrefsSiteAudit, AwarioBot, AwarioRssBot. 16 of the 19 share its safe 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 Rogerbot is usually a policy for these too.
A decision record for Rogerbot
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 Rogerbot entry reads:
- Operator and job: Moz; it checks pages for an SEO, uptime or analytics service.
- Priority and behaviour: Tier 4, rated safe, blocking impact not documented.
- Suggested starting point: Allow by default; revisit if it costs you bandwidth.
- Enforcement: Rogerbot's operator does not clearly document how it treats robots.txt. Write the Rogerbot rule anyway, then confirm in your logs that its requests stop.
User-agent: Rogerbot
Allow: /Paste the line into the validator with one of your own URLs before it goes live. Revisit the Rogerbot entry once a quarter, or when Moz publishes a new token next to it.
How top sites treat Moz's crawlers
From our robots.txt study of the Tranco top 10,000 (5,583 valid files, fetched October 20, 2026):
DotBot, the only one tracked among the Moz's crawlers tokens: blocked in 7.5% of files (184 with its own group, 235 throughUser-agent: *), more often by the top 1,000 (10.6%) than the long tail (7.1%).
For scale, 20.1% of all files block at least one AI training crawler. None of the tokens for Moz's crawlers comes close to that rate, so blocking them is still a minority choice.
More questions about Moz
- Will blocking Moz affect my Google rankings?
- Only if one of its tokens is a Google search crawler. None of Moz's tokens are Googlebot, so classic Google rankings are unaffected.
- How quickly does a robots.txt change take effect for Moz?
- 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 Moz on some sections and block it on others?
- Yes. Inside the group for
DotBot, addDisallowlines for the paths to keep private andAllowlines for exceptions. The longest matching rule wins. - Does blocking Moz delete content it already collected?
- No. robots.txt only controls future visits. For content already collected, check whether Moz offers a removal or opt-out process.
- Is a firewall block better than robots.txt for Moz?
- 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 Moz 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 live AI crawler test to see the outcome from outside, including any firewall layer.
How to block or allow Moz in robots.txt
These rules cover all 2 crawlers Moz operates. Add them to the robots.txt file at the root of your domain.
Block Moz completely
User-agent: DotBot
User-agent: Rogerbot
Disallow: /
Allow Moz explicitly
User-agent: DotBot
User-agent: Rogerbot
Allow: /
These Moz rules ask; they do not enforce. If a Moz 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 Moz
What crawlers does Moz run?
Moz operates 2 crawlers in our directory: DotBot (user-agent DotBot), Moz Campaign Crawler (user-agent Rogerbot).
Should I block Moz?
Consider blocking based on your content strategy. That guidance follows this operator's least reassuring crawler, DotBot, rated caution, because allowing an operator allows every crawler it runs. The SEO impact score for blocking is 2/10, where 10 means blocking costs you the most visibility.
How do I block Moz in robots.txt?
Add the following to robots.txt at your domain root: User-agent: DotBot then User-agent: Rogerbot then Disallow: /. One Disallow line covers all 2 user-agent tokens.
Does blocking Moz hurt my search rankings?
The highest-impact crawler here is Moz Campaign Crawler, rated: Low - No SEO ranking impact. Google's own ranking crawler is Googlebot, which this operator does not run, so blocking Moz 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.