Operated by Slack
Slackbot fetches links shared in Slack channels to unfurl them and display a preview of the content.
Slackbot fetches links shared in Slack channels to unfurl them and display a preview of the content.
Slackbot is operated by Slack to generate rich link previews when URLs are shared on their platform. It sends GET requests to your URL, reads <meta property="og:..."> and <meta name="twitter:..."> tags, and caches the result. Blocking Slackbot means all links to your domain shared on Slack appear as raw text without thumbnail, title, or description. This can reduce CTR from social referrals but has zero SEO impact.
<code>User-agent: Slackbot</code> — Matching is case-insensitive. Robots.txt is fetched from the root of each subdomain separately.
Slackbot 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 Slackbot's purpose helps you decide whether to allow or block it.
Slackbot. 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 Slackbot by performing a reverse-DNS lookup on the source IP — legitimate bots resolve back to their operator's domain.Slackbot 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: Slackbot Disallow: /This instructs Slackbot 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.Slackbot (case-insensitive grep: grep -i "Slackbot" /var/log/nginx/access.log). You can also check Google Search Console → Coverage → Crawl Stats for Googlebot variants. For Slackbot specifically, filter by user-agent in your log analysis tool (GoAccess, AWStats, etc.).User-agent: Slackbot Crawl-delay: 10(10 second delay between requests).
Disallow: / you can restrict Slackbot to specific paths:
User-agent: Slackbot Disallow: /private/ Disallow: /staging/ Allow: /This allows Slackbot everywhere except the listed paths. Path matching in robots.txt uses prefix matching —
Disallow: /private/ blocks /private/page.html but NOT /public/private/.Slackbot and ensure your pages include <meta property="og:title">, og:description, and og:image.