SeznamBot
Operated by Seznam
Quick Facts
- User-Agent:
- SeznamBot
- Category:
- Search Engines
- Operator:
- Seznam
- Safety:
- Safe
- Blocking Impact:
- Critical - Blocking removes you from search results
- SEO Impact Score:
- 10/10
- Official docs:
- napoveda.seznam.cz
Confirmed by the operator
Seznam names SeznamBot 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 SeznamBot?
The general-purpose web crawler search engine crawler for Seznam.cz, the most popular search engine in Czechia.
The general-purpose web crawler search engine crawler for Seznam.cz, the most popular search engine in Czechia.
SeznamBot is a production-grade search engine crawler operated by Seznam. It uses a distributed crawl infrastructure that respects crawl-delay directives, follows RFC 9309 (robots.txt) spec, and processes Sitemaps to prioritise fresh content. The user-agent string SeznamBot must be whitelisted if your site uses rate-limiting or WAF rules. Blocking impact is Critical - Blocking removes you from search results.
What happens if you block SeznamBot?
How to block SeznamBot with robots.txt
<code>User-agent: SeznamBot</code> - Matching is case-insensitive. Robots.txt is fetched from the root of each subdomain separately.
Is SeznamBot safe to allow?
SeznamBot is verifiable via reverse-DNS lookup on the crawling IP addresses. You can safely allow it unless you have a specific reason to block (e.g., AI training opt-out or SEO tool visibility).What does SeznamBot do?
Understanding SeznamBot's purpose helps you decide whether to allow or block it.
- Crawls and indexes web pages for search results
- Discovers new and updated content on your website
- Analyzes page structure, content, and links for ranking
- Renders JavaScript to understand dynamic content
- Checks for mobile-friendliness and page speed
SeznamBot in context
SeznamBot is a search engine crawler operated by Seznam. 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 critical. So SeznamBot is both well behaved and costly to lose: the strongest case for allowing it. How we rate safety and impact.
How site owners treat SeznamBot
Our robots.txt study of the Tranco top 10,000 did not track SeznamBot 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?
SeznamBot's operator does not clearly document how it treats robots.txt. Write the SeznamBot rule anyway, then confirm in your logs that its requests stop.
Seznam crawlers and close alternatives
Seznam runs only this one crawler in our database, so a single User-agent: SeznamBot group controls everything Seznam 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 SeznamBot is usually a decision about the whole group, so check how your file treats these too.
We first recorded SeznamBot on March 17, 2026. Seznam documents it on napoveda.seznam.cz, and we recheck that page before each release.
Which rule SeznamBot actually follows
SeznamBot reads exactly one group in robots.txt, the most specific one that names SeznamBot, and never combines rules across groups. This short file shows the trap:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /private/
User-agent: SeznamBot
Disallow: /drafts/- Find the group. SeznamBot looks for a group naming
SeznamBot. One exists, so it ignoresUser-agent: *completely. - Apply only that group. It is refused
/drafts/and nothing else. - The surprise.
/private/is open to SeznamBot, 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 SeznamBot if the file also has a User-agent: SeznamBot group?
No. Once a group names it, SeznamBot reads only that group. Put every rule you want it to follow inside its own group.
Test yourself: will blocking SeznamBot remove your pages from AI answers?
Often, yes. SeznamBot 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: seznambot the same as User-agent: SeznamBot?
Yes. RFC 9309 makes user-agent matching case-insensitive. Paths are a different story: Disallow: /Blog/ does not block /blog/.
Related: how AI engines choose their sources
Should you allow SeznamBot? 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 SeznamBot 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 SeznamBot on your own site
- Open
/robots.txton your domain and search forSeznamBot. If it is not named, it followsUser-agent: *. - List the
Disallowlines in the group SeznamBot 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 SeznamBot even when robots.txt allows it, and that never shows in the file.
- Run our GPTBot and ClaudeBot access check to see how SeznamBot and every other crawler we track are treated in one pass, including firewall refusals.
Common mistakes with SeznamBot
The errors we see most often with SeznamBot in the files and firewalls we test:
- Blocking SeznamBot 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: SeznamBotgroup to add one rule for SeznamBot and accidentally dropping every rule it used to follow underUser-agent: *. - Disallowing CSS and JavaScript folders, which can stop SeznamBot rendering your pages properly.
All three hide inside a file that looks correct, so check SeznamBot from outside after every change.
Spotting SeznamBot in your logs
robots.txt says what SeznamBot 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 "SeznamBot" /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 "SeznamBot" /var/log/nginx/access.log \
| awk '{print $7}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20Check the requests are genuine
Anyone can send the SeznamBot user-agent, so confirm the source before acting on a match:
SeznamBot: we hold no published IP list, so use reverse DNS where the operator documents a hostname and treat an unverifiable SeznamBot request with caution.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the official user-agent string for SeznamBot?
SeznamBot. 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 SeznamBot by performing a reverse-DNS lookup on the source IP - legitimate bots resolve back to their operator's domain.Is SeznamBot safe?
SeznamBot is verifiable via reverse-DNS lookup on the crawling IP addresses. You can safely allow it unless you have a specific reason to block (e.g., AI training opt-out or SEO tool visibility).Will blocking SeznamBot hurt my SEO?
How do I block SeznamBot in robots.txt?
/robots.txt file:User-agent: SeznamBot Disallow: /
This instructs SeznamBot 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 SeznamBot respect robots.txt?
How do I verify if SeznamBot is crawling my site?
SeznamBot (case-insensitive grep: grep -i "SeznamBot" /var/log/nginx/access.log). You can also check Google Search Console → Coverage → Crawl Stats for Googlebot variants. For SeznamBot specifically, filter by user-agent in your log analysis tool (GoAccess, AWStats, etc.).What is the crawl frequency of SeznamBot?
Can I block SeznamBot from specific pages only?
Disallow: / you can restrict SeznamBot to specific paths:User-agent: SeznamBot Disallow: /private/ Disallow: /staging/ Allow: /
This allows SeznamBot everywhere except the listed paths. Path matching in robots.txt uses prefix matching -
Disallow: /private/ blocks /private/page.html but NOT /public/private/.How do I check if SeznamBot is blocked by my robots.txt?
https://aicrawlercheck.com/robots.txt and scanning for SeznamBot entries. If a block exists, immediately test it against your most important URLs using the Google Search Console URL Inspection tool.My site is blocked by SeznamBot in Search Console - what do I do?
yourdomain.com/robots.txt and look for any User-agent: SeznamBot or User-agent: * Disallow rules covering your key pages.2. Remove or restrict the blocking rules.
3. Validate via Google Search Console → robots.txt Tester.
4. Request re-indexing using the URL Inspection tool.
5. Wait 1-2 weeks for re-crawl. Monitor Coverage report for recovery.