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Netvibes

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Quick Facts

User-Agent:Netvibes
Category:SEO Tools
Safety:Safe
Blocking Impact:Varies — Evaluate before blocking
SEO Impact Score:0/10

What is Netvibes?

Netvibes (now part of Dassault Systèmes) uses this crawler for its dashboard and analytics platform.

Netvibes (now part of Dassault Systèmes) uses this crawler for its dashboard and analytics platform. Netvibes is a commercial SEO analytics crawler operated by . It builds backlink graphs, crawls for technical SEO issues, and tracks keyword rankings. The user-agent Netvibes is well-known and respected in the SEO industry. Blocking it removes your domain from 's index, preventing competitors from analysing your backlink profile via their platform. However, other users also lose visibility into links pointing TO your site — weigh this trade-off carefully.

What happens if you block Netvibes?

❓ **Impact Unknown** — The SEO consequences of blocking Netvibes are not fully documented. Before blocking, check your analytics to confirm whether this bot generates referral traffic, review your server logs for crawl frequency, and test in a staging environment if possible.
Generally safe to allow; provides legitimate crawling value.

How to block Netvibes with robots.txt

<code>User-agent: Netvibes</code> — Matching is case-insensitive. Robots.txt is fetched from the root of each subdomain separately.

Block completely (robots.txt)
User-agent: Netvibes Disallow: /
Allow all (robots.txt)
User-agent: Netvibes Allow: /
Block private only (robots.txt)
User-agent: Netvibes Disallow: /private/ Disallow: /api/ Disallow: /admin/ Allow: /
Nginx server block
# Nginx: Hard-block Netvibes if ($http_user_agent ~* "Netvibes") { return 403 "Bot blocked"; }
Apache .htaccess
# Apache: Hard-block Netvibes SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent "Netvibes" 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 Netvibes safe to allow?

Yes, Netvibes is a **safe and legitimate** crawler. It is operated by , which publicly documents its crawler at an official URL and follows the Robots Exclusion Protocol (RFC 9309). The user-agent string Netvibes 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).
Verify by reverse-DNS lookup: legitimate Netvibes requests resolve to 's domain.

What does Netvibes do?

Understanding Netvibes's purpose helps you decide whether to allow or block it.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the official user-agent string for Netvibes?
The official user-agent string for Netvibes is: Netvibes. 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 Netvibes by performing a reverse-DNS lookup on the source IP — legitimate bots resolve back to their operator's domain.
Is Netvibes safe?
Yes, Netvibes is a **safe and legitimate** crawler. It is operated by , which publicly documents its crawler at an official URL and follows the Robots Exclusion Protocol (RFC 9309). The user-agent string Netvibes 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 Netvibes hurt my SEO?
❓ **Impact Unknown** — The SEO consequences of blocking Netvibes are not fully documented. Before blocking, check your analytics to confirm whether this bot generates referral traffic, review your server logs for crawl frequency, and test in a staging environment if possible.
How do I block Netvibes in robots.txt?
Add the following lines to your /robots.txt file: 
User-agent: Netvibes
Disallow: /
This instructs Netvibes 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 Netvibes respect robots.txt?
Yes — Netvibes is a well-behaved bot operated by . It fetches and parses /robots.txt before crawling any page, following RFC 9309.
How do I verify if Netvibes is crawling my site?
Search your web server access logs for the string Netvibes (case-insensitive grep: grep -i "Netvibes" /var/log/nginx/access.log). You can also check Google Search Console → Coverage → Crawl Stats for Googlebot variants. For Netvibes specifically, filter by user-agent in your log analysis tool (GoAccess, AWStats, etc.).
What is the crawl frequency of Netvibes?
Netvibes crawls at a moderate rate. If you notice excessive traffic in your logs, you can add a Crawl-delay directive: 
User-agent: Netvibes
Crawl-delay: 10
(10 second delay between requests).
Can I block Netvibes from specific pages only?
Yes. Instead of a global Disallow: / you can restrict Netvibes to specific paths: 
User-agent: Netvibes
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /staging/
Allow: /
This allows Netvibes everywhere except the listed paths. Path matching in robots.txt uses prefix matching — Disallow: /private/ blocks /private/page.html but NOT /public/private/.
Why would I want to block Netvibes?
There are two main reasons to block Netvibes: 1. **Competitive intelligence**: users (your competitors) can analyse your backlink profile, keyword rankings, and site structure. Blocking prevents this. 2. **Crawl budget**: If your site is large, SEO tool crawlers consume crawl bandwidth without contributing to search rankings. Blocking frees up server resources for search engine bots. The trade-off: you also become invisible in 's backlink database, meaning links pointing TO your site from other domains won't appear in competitor reports either.

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