What is Internet Archive?
Internet Archive is an archiver operated by Internet Archive. You can set up Agent Analytics to see when Internet Archive visits your website.
Overview
| Operated By | Internet Archive |
| Expected To Follow Robots.txt | Yes |
| Insights Last Updated | September 14, 2026 |
Do you operate this agent? Contact us to suggest an update.
Category
Expected Behavior
Internet Archive periodically fetches complete pages rather than checking metadata alone. Visit frequency typically rises with your site's popularity and update cadence.
Internet Archive's User Agent
| User Agent | gov-posts-archive/0.1 (antoine@archive.org; State Dept social media preservation; from Internet Archive infrastructure) |
How To Block Internet Archive With Robots.txt
Add this rule to your robots.txt file to block Internet Archive from accessing your website, or use Automatic Robots.txt to block all archivers at once. You can customize which pages are blocked by swapping out / for a different path.
User-agent: Internet Archive # https://knownagents.com/agents/internet-archive
Disallow: /Insights for Internet Archive
As of September 14, 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
Robots.txt Blocking Trend
6% of top websites block Internet Archive in their robots.txts.
Overall Archiver Traffic
0.0% of all web traffic came from archivers.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I Block Internet Archive?
Rarely. Internet Archive preserves snapshots of your pages through redesigns, migrations, and broken links. Blocking it prevents future captures but does not remove existing snapshots. To remove those, you must contact the archive directly. For context, 6% of the top websites we track currently have robots.txt rules for Internet Archive.
Does Internet Archive Follow Robots.txt Rules?
Yes. Internet Archive 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 Internet Archive respects it.
Does Internet Archive Access Private Content?
No. Internet Archive archives only what an anonymous visitor can see. Anything public at crawl time may remain available in its archive long after you remove it from your site.
How Can I Tell if Internet Archive Is Visiting My Website?
Agent Analytics tracks Internet Archive visits in real time. You can also check your server logs for requests whose user-agent string contains "Internet Archive". Look for a page and its embedded assets being fetched again after a long interval. Because Internet Archive does not publish a verification method, any client can claim its identity and a log match is only a clue.
Why Is Internet Archive Visiting My Website?
Internet Archive is preserving your pages as part of a historical record. It returns periodically so the archive can capture how your content changes over time.