What is James BOT?
James BOT is cognitiveSEO's web crawler that analyzes website links, content, and SEO factors. It crawls websites to provide comprehensive SEO audits, backlink analysis, and site performance data for digital marketing optimization and competitor research. You can set up Agent Analytics to see when James BOT visits your website.
Overview
| Operated By | cognitiveSEO |
| Source | Official Website |
| 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
James BOT 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.
James BOT's User Agent
| User Agent | Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/76.0.3809.87 Safari/537.36 - James BOT - WebCrawler http://cognitiveseo.com/bot.html |
How To Block James BOT With Robots.txt
Add this rule to your robots.txt file to block James BOT 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: James BOT # https://knownagents.com/agents/james-bot
Disallow: /Insights for James BOT
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 James BOT in their robots.txts.
Overall SEO Crawler Traffic
1.7% of all web traffic came from SEO crawlers.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I Block James BOT?
Consider blocking James BOT 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, 6% of the top websites we track currently have robots.txt rules for James BOT.
Does James BOT Follow Robots.txt Rules?
Yes. James BOT 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 James BOT respects it.
Does James BOT Access Private Content?
No. James BOT can reach only public pages, and authentication prevents it from accessing private content.
How Can I Tell if James BOT Is Visiting My Website?
Agent Analytics tracks James BOT visits in real time. You can also check your server logs for requests whose user-agent string contains "James BOT". Look for comprehensive site crawls that follow internal links. Because James BOT does not publish a verification method, any client can claim its identity and a log match is only a clue.
Why Is James BOT Visiting My Website?
Your domain appears in the ranking, backlink, or competitor data maintained by James BOT's operator. A customer may be tracking your site, one of your competitors, or a backlink that connects another site to yours.