What is micro-crawl?
micro-crawl is a web crawler operated by Reflection AI that downloads website content for AI research and model development. Agent Analytics can track when it visits your website.
Overview
| Operated By | Reflection AI |
| Expected To Follow Robots.txt | Yes |
| Insights Last Updated | July 7, 2026 |
Category
Expected Behavior
micro-crawl crawls websites to build AI training datasets, and its operator decides which sites, how often, and how deep it goes. Expect broad sweeps that fetch far more pages per visit than a search crawler would, on an unpredictable schedule. Volume can run heavy while a collection pass is underway, then stop entirely.
How To Block micro-crawl With Robots.txt
Add this rule to your robots.txt file to block micro-crawl from accessing your entire website, or use Automatic Robots.txt to block all AI data scrapers at once. You can customize which pages are blocked by swapping out / for a different path.
User-agent: micro-crawl # https://knownagents.com/agents/micro-crawl
Disallow: /micro-crawl Global Insights
As of July 7, 2026, this data reflects agent visits measured across thousands of websites using Agent Analytics, combined with daily scans of the world's top 1000 websites and their robots.txt files.
Robots.txt Blocked Percentage
Country of Origin
Robots.txt Blocking Trend
0% of top websites block micro-crawl in their robots.txt files.
Overall AI Data Scraper Traffic
2.4% of all web traffic came from AI data scrapers.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I Block micro-crawl?
Block it if you want control over how your work trains AI models. micro-crawl downloads your content into training datasets without attribution, compensation, or any promise of traffic back. The case for allowing it is reach, because models trained on your content can surface your brand in AI answers. Neither choice changes your Google rankings. Almost none of the top websites we track have robots.txt rules for micro-crawl right now.
Does micro-crawl Respect Robots.txt?
Yes. micro-crawl is expected to honor robots.txt rules, so a disallow rule is the right first move. Automatic Robots.txt adds and maintains that rule for you, and Agent Analytics confirms micro-crawl actually honors it.
Does micro-crawl Access Private Content?
micro-crawl targets public content, but the boundary is not always respected. Some training data scrapers go after paywalled or gated pages when the operator wants that data. If a page loads without signing in, assume it can be collected.
Why Is micro-crawl Visiting My Website?
Your content matched what Reflection AI wants in a training dataset. micro-crawl discovers pages mechanically, through links from other sites, sitemaps, and seed lists, not because anyone chose your site personally.
How Can I Tell if micro-crawl Is Visiting My Website?
Agent Analytics tracks micro-crawl visits in real time alongside every other known AI agent, crawler, and scraper. You can also check your server logs for requests whose user agent string contains "micro-crawl". Look for broad sweeps that fetch large numbers of pages in sequence. Keep in mind that micro-crawl doesn't publish a verification method, so any client can claim its user agent string and a log match is a hint rather than proof.