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Aggressive Data Scrapers

news-please

Operated by Open Source

Quick Facts

User-Agent:news-please
Category:Data Scrapers
Operator:Open Source
Safety:Aggressive
Blocking Impact:Low — No SEO ranking impact
SEO Impact Score:2/10

What is news-please?

An open-source news crawler and extractor library.

An open-source news crawler and extractor library. news-please is a data aggregation crawler. Unlike search bots or AI crawlers, its purpose is typically to collect content for private datasets, price monitoring, or research. Blocking news-please via robots.txt or at the server level has NO negative SEO impact. If you see excessive crawl volume from this bot in your logs, a hard block is recommended.

What happens if you block news-please?

✅ **Minimal Impact** — Blocking news-please has no meaningful effect on your search engine rankings or organic traffic.
Block this bot — it provides no SEO benefit and wastes crawl budget.

How to block news-please with robots.txt

<code>User-agent: news-please</code> — Matching is case-insensitive. Robots.txt is fetched from the root of each subdomain separately. For aggressive bots, supplement with server-level blocking for guaranteed enforcement.

Block completely (robots.txt)
User-agent: news-please Disallow: /
Allow all (robots.txt)
User-agent: news-please Allow: /
Block private only (robots.txt)
User-agent: news-please Disallow: /private/ Disallow: /api/ Disallow: /admin/ Allow: /
Nginx server block
# Nginx: Hard-block news-please if ($http_user_agent ~* "news\-please") { return 403 "Bot blocked"; }
Apache .htaccess
# Apache: Hard-block news-please SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent "news\-please" bad_bot Order Allow,Deny Allow from all Deny from env=bad_bot
Meta robots tag
<meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow">
X-Robots-Tag header
X-Robots-Tag: noindex, nofollow

Is news-please safe to allow?

🔴 **news-please is classified as Aggressive.** This bot has been observed ignoring robots.txt directives, crawling at excessive rates that impact server performance, or collecting data in ways that violate standard web etiquette. **We strongly recommend blocking this bot** at both the robots.txt level AND server level (Nginx/Apache/Cloudflare WAF). A robots.txt block alone may be insufficient if the bot does not respect it.

What does news-please do?

Understanding news-please's purpose helps you decide whether to allow or block it.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the official user-agent string for news-please?
The official user-agent string for news-please is: news-please. This is the exact string you must use in robots.txt, Nginx, Apache, or Cloudflare firewall rules to target this bot. User-agent matching in robots.txt is case-insensitive, but the string must be spelled correctly. You can verify that a request genuinely comes from news-please by performing a reverse-DNS lookup on the source IP — legitimate bots resolve back to their operator's domain.
Is news-please safe?
🔴 **news-please is classified as Aggressive.** This bot has been observed ignoring robots.txt directives, crawling at excessive rates that impact server performance, or collecting data in ways that violate standard web etiquette. **We strongly recommend blocking this bot** at both the robots.txt level AND server level (Nginx/Apache/Cloudflare WAF). A robots.txt block alone may be insufficient if the bot does not respect it.
Will blocking news-please hurt my SEO?
✅ **Minimal Impact** — Blocking news-please has no meaningful effect on your search engine rankings or organic traffic.
How do I block news-please in robots.txt?
Add the following lines to your /robots.txt file: 
User-agent: news-please
Disallow: /
This instructs news-please not to crawl any path on your site. The Disallow: / directive covers the entire domain including subfolders. To only block specific sections, replace / with the path (e.g., Disallow: /blog/). Note: robots.txt is publicly readable — any bot or human can inspect it at yourdomain.com/robots.txt.
Does news-please respect robots.txt?
⚠️ news-please may not always respect robots.txt. For guaranteed blocking, combine robots.txt with server-level rules (Nginx if/return 403, Apache SetEnvIf, or Cloudflare WAF).
How do I verify if news-please is crawling my site?
Search your web server access logs for the string news-please (case-insensitive grep: grep -i "news-please" /var/log/nginx/access.log). You can also check Google Search Console → Coverage → Crawl Stats for Googlebot variants. For news-please specifically, filter by user-agent in your log analysis tool (GoAccess, AWStats, etc.).
What is the crawl frequency of news-please?
Crawl frequency data for news-please is not publicly documented. Monitor your logs to understand actual visit patterns.
Can I block news-please from specific pages only?
Yes. Instead of a global Disallow: / you can restrict news-please to specific paths: 
User-agent: news-please
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /staging/
Allow: /
This allows news-please everywhere except the listed paths. Path matching in robots.txt uses prefix matching — Disallow: /private/ blocks /private/page.html but NOT /public/private/.
Is news-please causing high server load?
If news-please is generating excessive requests, you can: 1. Add Crawl-delay: 30 below the User-agent directive in robots.txt. 2. Rate-limit the user-agent via Nginx's limit_req_zone or Apache's mod_ratelimit. 3. Block it outright at Cloudflare WAF with rule: http.user_agent contains "news-please". 4. Use fail2ban to auto-block IPs exceeding request thresholds.

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