Ibou Search
Operated by Ibou
Quick Facts
- User-Agent:
- IbouBot
- Category:
- Search Engines
- Operator:
- Ibou
- Safety:
- Safe
- Blocking Impact:
- Low - No SEO ranking impact
- SEO Impact Score:
- 2/10
- Official docs:
- www.ibou.com
Confirmed by the operator
Ibou names IbouBot on its own documentation page, linked above. The token, purpose and robots.txt behaviour on this profile come from that page, re-checked on October 19, 2026.
What is Ibou Search?
IbouBot is the crawler for ibou, an independent search engine. Ibou says it discovers public pages and indexes them so readers can find them, with every answer citing and linking its sources.
It identifies itself as Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; IbouBot/1.0; +bot@ibou.com; +https://www.ibou.com/iboubot.html). Ibou documents it at ibou.com.
What happens if you block Ibou Search?
How to block Ibou Search with robots.txt
<code>User-agent: IbouBot</code> - Matching is case-insensitive. Robots.txt is fetched from the root of each subdomain separately.
Is Ibou Search safe to allow?
What does Ibou Search do?
Understanding Ibou Search's purpose helps you decide whether to allow or block it.
- Indexes web pages for AI-powered search answers
- Surfaces your content as citations inside AI search results
- Builds a knowledge index used to answer user questions
- Allowing it can increase visibility in AI search
- robots.txt behaviour not documented by the operator
Ibou Search in context
Ibou Search is a search engine crawler operated by Ibou. In plain terms, it builds a search or answer index. Our database files it under search engines and ranks it Tier 3, mid-priority crawlers with a clear purpose but a smaller audience. 62 of the 63 search engines in our database share this tier.
Its safety rating is safe and its blocking impact is not documented. So the decision about Ibou Search rests on what you want from Ibou, not on its behaviour. How we rate safety and impact.
How site owners treat Ibou Search
Our robots.txt study of the Tranco top 10,000 did not track IbouBot as a named token, so we do not publish an adoption figure for it. If you run a large site, your own logs are the best evidence of how often it visits.
Does it follow robots.txt?
Ibou Search's operator says it follows robots.txt, so a correctly written Ibou Search group is enough to control it.
Ibou crawlers and close alternatives
Ibou runs only this one crawler in our database, so a single User-agent: IbouBot group controls everything Ibou fetches through it.
Other search engines that do the same job (builds a search or answer index) include Amzn-SearchBot from Amazon, Applebot from Apple, baidu from Baidu, Baiduspider from Baidu, Baiduspider-favo from Baidu, Baiduspider-image from Baidu. Deciding about Ibou Search is usually a decision about the whole group, so check how your file treats these too.
We first recorded IbouBot on September 22, 2026. Ibou documents it on ibou.com, and we recheck that page before each release.
Which rule Ibou Search actually follows
Ibou Search reads exactly one group in robots.txt, the most specific one that names IbouBot, and never combines rules across groups. This short file shows the trap:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /private/
User-agent: IbouBot
Disallow: /drafts/- Find the group. Ibou Search looks for a group naming
IbouBot. One exists, so it ignoresUser-agent: *completely. - Apply only that group. It is refused
/drafts/and nothing else. - The surprise.
/private/is open to Ibou Search, because that rule lives in the*group it no longer reads. To keep it out of both, repeatDisallow: /private/inside its own group.
Test yourself: does a rule under User-agent: * apply to Ibou Search if the file also has a User-agent: IbouBot group?
No. Once a group names it, Ibou Search reads only that group. Put every rule you want it to follow inside its own group.
Test yourself: will blocking Ibou Search remove your pages from AI answers?
Often, yes. Ibou Search is a search engine crawler, so pages it cannot fetch can drop out of the answers or results it supports.
Test yourself: is User-agent: iboubot the same as User-agent: IbouBot?
Yes. RFC 9309 makes user-agent matching case-insensitive. Paths are a different story: Disallow: /Blog/ does not block /blog/.
Should you allow Ibou Search? Decide by situation
| If you are... | Recommended setting |
|---|---|
| You publish content and want AI answers to cite it | Allow it. It is how this search engine finds your pages. |
| You license content and want to stop AI training | Blocking it does not stop training, because Ibou Search is a search engine crawler. Block the operator's training crawler instead. |
| You run an online shop | Allow it unless it is overloading your servers. |
| Your server is under load from bots | Rate-limit before blocking. It is rated safe in our database. |
Check Ibou Search on your own site
- Open
/robots.txton your domain and search forIbouBot. If it is not named, it followsUser-agent: *. - List the
Disallowlines in the group Ibou Search follows and test your key URLs against them; the longest match wins, andAllowwins a tie. - Look beyond the file. A firewall or bot manager can refuse Ibou Search even when robots.txt allows it, and that never shows in the file.
- Run our website crawlability test to see how Ibou Search and every other crawler we track are treated in one pass, including firewall refusals.
Common mistakes with Ibou Search
The errors we see most often with Ibou Search in the files and firewalls we test:
- Blocking Ibou Search to save bandwidth and then wondering why pages drop out of that search engine. Use crawl-rate settings or caching first.
- Writing a
User-agent: IbouBotgroup to add one rule for Ibou Search and accidentally dropping every rule it used to follow underUser-agent: *. - Disallowing CSS and JavaScript folders, which can stop Ibou Search rendering your pages properly.
All three hide inside a file that looks correct, so check Ibou Search from outside after every change.
Spotting Ibou Search in your logs
robots.txt says what Ibou Search may do; your access logs show what it 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 "IbouBot" /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 "IbouBot" /var/log/nginx/access.log \
| awk '{print $7}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20Check the requests are genuine
Anyone can send the Ibou Search user-agent, so confirm the source before acting on a match:
IbouBot: we hold no published IP list, so use reverse DNS where the operator documents a hostname and treat an unverifiable Ibou Search request with caution.
Frequently Asked Questions
What user-agent string does IbouBot use?
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; IbouBot/1.0; +bot@ibou.com; +https://www.ibou.com/iboubot.html). Use IbouBot in robots.txt.Is IbouBot safe?
Does IbouBot respect robots.txt?
Does IbouBot train AI models?
How do I block IbouBot in robots.txt?
User-agent: IbouBot Disallow: /