What is AhrefsBot?
AhrefsBot is Ahrefs' web crawler that powers both the Ahrefs marketing intelligence platform and Yep search engine, constantly crawling the web to build a comprehensive link database. You can set up Agent Analytics to see when AhrefsBot visits your website.
Category
| Example User Agent | Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; AhrefsBot/7.0; +http://ahrefs.com/robot/) |
| Operated By | Ahrefs |
| Source | Official Website |
| Identity |
Verified
Verified Identification
Requests claiming to be this agent can be authenticated using its published verification method. |
| Triggered By | Customer-configured crawl |
| Used for AI Model Training | Not expected |
| Affects AI Chat & Search Visibility | Not directly |
| Expected To Follow Robots.txt | Yes |
Why Is AhrefsBot Visiting My Website?
Your domain appears in the ranking, backlink, or competitor data maintained by AhrefsBot's operator. A customer may be tracking your site, one of your competitors, or a backlink that connects another site to yours.
Should I Block AhrefsBot?
Consider blocking AhrefsBot only if you do not want your pages included in SEO databases. It does not influence how search engines rank you, and blocking it will not hide backlinks to your site because those are discovered on the linking sites. For context, 11% of the top websites we track currently have robots.txt rules for AhrefsBot.
How Do I Block AhrefsBot Using Robots.txt?
Add this rule to your robots.txt file to block AhrefsBot from accessing your website, or use Automatic Robots.txt to block all SEO crawlers at once. You can customize which pages are blocked by swapping out / for a different path.
User-agent: AhrefsBot # https://knownagents.com/agents/ahrefsbot
Disallow: /Insights for AhrefsBot
As of October 30, 2026, this data reflects agent visits measured across thousands of websites using Agent Analytics, combined with daily scans of the top 1000 websites and their robots.txt files.
Robots.txt Compliance
Country of Origin
Robots.txt Blocked Percentage
Frequently Asked Questions
What Traffic Patterns Should I Expect From AhrefsBot?
AhrefsBot usually performs comprehensive, link-following crawls rather than spot checks. Visit frequency may rise while a customer actively monitors your site or a related market.
Does AhrefsBot Follow Robots.txt Rules?
AhrefsBot is expected to follow robots.txt rules, so a disallow rule is the appropriate first step if you want to block it. Automatic Robots.txt can add and maintain that rule, while Agent Analytics lets you verify whether AhrefsBot respects it.
Is AhrefsBot Used for AI Model Training?
Not ordinarily. AhrefsBot is not categorized as an AI training scraper or data provider, so AI model training is not its expected purpose.
Does Blocking AhrefsBot Affect AI Search or Citations?
Not directly. AhrefsBot's expected purpose is not to supply an AI search index or retrieve pages for AI-generated answers.
Does AhrefsBot Access Private Content?
No. AhrefsBot can reach only public pages, and authentication prevents it from accessing private content.
How Can I Verify a Request From AhrefsBot?
Agent Analytics tracks visits from AhrefsBot and every other known AI agent, crawler, and scraper, then authenticates each visit using AhrefsBot's published verification method. You can also check your server logs for requests whose user-agent string contains "AhrefsBot". Look for comprehensive site crawls that follow internal links. A matching log entry alone is not proof because any bot can claim to be AhrefsBot.
How Is AhrefsBot Different From Other Ahrefs Agents?
Ahrefs operates separate agents for different purposes, so each agent should be evaluated and controlled independently.
- YepBot: YepBot is a web crawler operated by Ahrefs that supports Yep, a search engine providing web search results for human users and AI agents.
- Ahrefs Site Audit: Ahrefs Site Audit is an SEO crawler operated by Ahrefs.
- AhrefsSiteAudit: AhrefsSiteAudit is a technical SEO crawler that analyzes websites to identify and flag over 170 technical and on-page SEO issues, providing detailed recommendations and p…