What is ibou-search?
ibou-search is Ibou's main web crawler. It discovers and indexes public pages for Ibou's search engine, which cites sources and links readers to the original publishers. You can set up Agent Analytics to see when ibou-search visits your website.
Overview
| Operated By | Ibou |
| Source | Official Website |
| Expected To Follow Robots.txt | Yes |
| Insights Last Updated | October 21, 2026 |
Do you operate this agent? Contact us to suggest an update.
Category
Expected Behavior
ibou-search follows an algorithmic schedule shaped by your site's popularity, update cadence, and domain authority. It generally spreads requests across recurring crawl passes, throttles itself to limit server load, and respects crawl rules more reliably than most other bots.
How To Block ibou-search With Robots.txt
Add this rule to your robots.txt file to block ibou-search from accessing your website, or use Automatic Robots.txt to block all search engine crawlers at once. You can customize which pages are blocked by swapping out / for a different path.
User-agent: ibou-search # https://knownagents.com/agents/ibou-search
Disallow: /Insights for ibou-search
As of October 21, 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 Blocked Percentage
Country of Origin
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I Block ibou-search?
No, unless you want to remove your pages from that search engine. ibou-search supplies its index, so blocking it can eliminate your visibility and organic traffic there. Nearly every website should allow this category. Almost none of the top websites we track currently have robots.txt rules for ibou-search.
Does ibou-search Follow Robots.txt Rules?
Yes. ibou-search is expected to follow robots.txt rules, so a disallow rule is the appropriate first step. Automatic Robots.txt can add and maintain that rule, while Agent Analytics lets you verify whether ibou-search respects it.
Does ibou-search Access Private Content?
No special access. ibou-search can reach only content available to anonymous visitors and does not sign in. Make sure sensitive content is not public by mistake.
How Can I Tell if ibou-search Is Visiting My Website?
Agent Analytics tracks visits from ibou-search and every other known AI agent, crawler, and scraper, then authenticates each visit using ibou-search's published verification method. You can also check your server logs for requests whose user-agent string contains "ibou-search". Look for recurring passes that revisit changed pages and discover new ones. A matching log entry alone is not proof because any bot can claim to be ibou-search.
Why Is ibou-search Visiting My Website?
ibou-search is adding new or changed pages to its search index. It may have discovered your site through links, a sitemap, or direct submission.