Operated by Ahrefs
AhrefsBot is the crawler for Ahrefs, a popular SEO toolset. It is one of the most active bots on the web, used to build their backlink database.
AhrefsBot is the crawler for Ahrefs, a popular SEO toolset. It is one of the most active bots on the web, used to build their backlink database.
AhrefsBot is a commercial SEO analytics crawler operated by Ahrefs. It builds backlink graphs, crawls for technical SEO issues, and tracks keyword rankings. The user-agent AhrefsBot is well-known and respected in the SEO industry. Blocking it removes your domain from Ahrefs's index, preventing competitors from analysing your backlink profile via their platform. However, other Ahrefs users also lose visibility into links pointing TO your site — weigh this trade-off carefully.
<code>User-agent: AhrefsBot</code> — Matching is case-insensitive. Robots.txt is fetched from the root of each subdomain separately.
AhrefsBot 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).Understanding AhrefsBot's purpose helps you decide whether to allow or block it.
AhrefsBot. 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 AhrefsBot by performing a reverse-DNS lookup on the source IP — legitimate bots resolve back to their operator's domain.AhrefsBot 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)./robots.txt file:
User-agent: AhrefsBot Disallow: /This instructs AhrefsBot 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.AhrefsBot (case-insensitive grep: grep -i "AhrefsBot" /var/log/nginx/access.log). You can also check Google Search Console → Coverage → Crawl Stats for Googlebot variants. For AhrefsBot specifically, filter by user-agent in your log analysis tool (GoAccess, AWStats, etc.).User-agent: AhrefsBot Crawl-delay: 10(10 second delay between requests).
Disallow: / you can restrict AhrefsBot to specific paths:
User-agent: AhrefsBot Disallow: /private/ Disallow: /staging/ Allow: /This allows AhrefsBot everywhere except the listed paths. Path matching in robots.txt uses prefix matching —
Disallow: /private/ blocks /private/page.html but NOT /public/private/.