What is NewsBlur Feed Fetcher?
NewsBlur Feed Fetcher is the bot used by NewsBlur, an RSS feed reader service, to retrieve and update content from RSS and Atom feeds that users have subscribed to. The bot visits websites to fetch new articles and updates for NewsBlur's readers. You can set up Agent Analytics to see when NewsBlur Feed Fetcher visits your website.
Overview
| Operated By | NewsBlur |
| Source | Official Website |
| Expected To Follow Robots.txt | No |
| Insights Last Updated | September 14, 2026 |
Do you operate this agent? Contact us to suggest an update.
Category
Expected Behavior
NewsBlur Feed Fetcher usually makes a single request within seconds of a URL being shared, without crawling further. Traffic rises and falls with sharing activity, so a widely circulated link can produce a sharp burst of fetches.
NewsBlur Feed Fetcher's User Agent
| User Agent | NewsBlur Feed Fetcher - 191 subscribers - https://www.newsblur.com/site/9768143/english-vice ("Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/147.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 Edg/147.0.0.0") |
How To Block NewsBlur Feed Fetcher With Robots.txt
Add this rule to your robots.txt file to request that NewsBlur Feed Fetcher not access your website, or use Automatic Robots.txt to request the same of all fetchers at once. You can customize which pages are blocked by swapping out / for a different path.
User-agent: NewsBlur Feed Fetcher # https://knownagents.com/agents/newsblur-feed-fetcher
Disallow: /Insights for NewsBlur Feed Fetcher
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 NewsBlur Feed Fetcher in their robots.txts.
Overall Fetcher Traffic
1.7% of all web traffic came from fetchers.
Top Visited Website Categories
The types of websites most frequently visited by NewsBlur Feed Fetcher.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I Block NewsBlur Feed Fetcher?
Usually not. Blocking NewsBlur Feed Fetcher may leave shared links without a title or image, making them less inviting to click. If it begins fetching at unexpected volume, try rate limiting before blocking it outright. For context, 6% of the top websites we track currently have robots.txt rules for NewsBlur Feed Fetcher.
Does NewsBlur Feed Fetcher Follow Robots.txt Rules?
No. NewsBlur Feed Fetcher is not expected to follow robots.txt rules, so a disallow rule only communicates your preference. Enforce the block with firewall or server rules, then use Agent Analytics to verify that its requests stop.
Does NewsBlur Feed Fetcher Access Private Content?
No. NewsBlur Feed Fetcher has no credentials and should access only the public URL and assets needed for a preview. It does not continue through the rest of your site.
How Can I Tell if NewsBlur Feed Fetcher Is Visiting My Website?
Agent Analytics tracks NewsBlur Feed Fetcher visits in real time. You can also check your server logs for requests whose user-agent string contains "NewsBlur Feed Fetcher". Look for a page and its preview assets being requested without follow-up navigation. Because NewsBlur Feed Fetcher does not publish a verification method, any client can claim its identity and a log match is only a clue.
Why Is NewsBlur Feed Fetcher Visiting My Website?
Someone shared a link to your page. NewsBlur Feed Fetcher fetched it to build a preview card, and each new share may trigger another request. A spike often means your content is circulating more widely.