Overview
AhrefsBot is a search crawler from Ahrefs used for search indexing, URL discovery, page rendering, result freshness, and search-quality checks.
Its primary user-agent pattern is AhrefsBot; related patterns include Ahrefs crawler; a representative HTTP user-agent is Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; AhrefsBot/7.0; +http://ahrefs.com/robot/).
AhrefsBot is verified with High confidence. The identity type is Verified Bot, and the evidence basis is official operator documentation.
AhrefsBot is marked as respecting robots.txt directives for crawler access control.
AhrefsBot should be reviewed against site policy, source evidence, crawl rate, and requested paths before a permanent allow or block rule is created.
Identity
- User-Agent Pattern
-
AhrefsBot - Aliases
- Ahrefs crawler
- HTTP Agent Examples
-
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; AhrefsBot/7.0; +http://ahrefs.com/robot/) - Robots Token
- AhrefsBot
- Identity Type
- Verified bot
- Evidence Method
- Verify AhrefsBot by matching `AhrefsBot` to Ahrefs evidence, then checking reverse DNS, source-network ownership, signed request data, or published crawler documentation when available.
Classification
- Type
- Search
- Kind
- Crawler
- Family
- Ahrefs
- Purpose
- Indexing
Behavior and handling
- Common Use
- AhrefsBot is used for search indexing, URL discovery, page rendering, result freshness, and search-quality checks.
- Detection Notes
- AhrefsBot traffic is primarily detected by the `AhrefsBot` user-agent pattern; related patterns include `Ahrefs crawler`; a representative HTTP user-agent is `Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; AhrefsBot/7.0; +http://ahrefs.com/robot/)`. Compare source IPs, reverse DNS, request paths, and crawl cadence with Ahrefs infrastructure before trusting the traffic.
- Respects robots.txt
- Yes
- Spoofing Risk
- AhrefsBot has medium spoofing risk because the user-agent can be copied, even when the bot has strong source or documentation support.
- Risk
- Neutral
- Recommended Handling
- Depends
Rules and controls
- Robots.txt Snippet
-
User-agent: AhrefsBot Disallow: /
Relationships
- Operator
- Ahrefs Checked 2026-06-23
Relationships without an Evidence link are normalized from the canonical directory record. They should not be interpreted as independent proof of physical presence or request origin.