What is OnCrawl?
OnCrawl is an SEO crawler. You can set up Agent Analytics to see when OnCrawl visits your website.
Category
| Example User Agent | Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; BrightEdgeOnCrawl/1.0; +http://www.oncrawl.com) |
| Triggered By | Customer-configured crawl |
| Used for AI Model Training | Not expected |
| Affects AI Chat & Search Visibility | Not directly |
| Expected To Follow Robots.txt | Yes |
Why Is OnCrawl Visiting My Website?
Your domain appears in the ranking, backlink, or competitor data maintained by OnCrawl's operator. A customer may be tracking your site, one of your competitors, or a backlink that connects another site to yours.
Should I Block OnCrawl?
Consider blocking OnCrawl 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 OnCrawl.
How Do I Block OnCrawl Using Robots.txt?
Add this rule to your robots.txt file to block OnCrawl 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: OnCrawl # https://knownagents.com/agents/oncrawl
Disallow: /Insights for OnCrawl
As of October 29, 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 Compliance
Country of Origin
Robots.txt Blocked Percentage
OnCrawl Traffic
Frequently Asked Questions
What Traffic Patterns Should I Expect From OnCrawl?
OnCrawl 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.
Does OnCrawl Follow Robots.txt Rules?
OnCrawl is expected to follow robots.txt rules, so a disallow rule is the appropriate first step if you want to block it. Automatic Robots.txt can add and maintain that rule, while Agent Analytics lets you verify whether OnCrawl respects it.
Is OnCrawl Used for AI Model Training?
Not ordinarily. OnCrawl is not categorized as an AI training scraper or data provider, so AI model training is not its expected purpose.
Does Blocking OnCrawl Affect AI Search or Citations?
Not directly. OnCrawl's expected purpose is not to supply an AI search index or retrieve pages for AI-generated answers.
Does OnCrawl Access Private Content?
No. OnCrawl can reach only public pages, and authentication prevents it from accessing private content.
How Can I Verify a Request From OnCrawl?
Agent Analytics tracks OnCrawl visits in real time. You can also check your server logs for requests whose user-agent string contains "OnCrawl". Look for comprehensive site crawls that follow internal links. Because OnCrawl does not publish a verification method, any client can claim its identity and a log match is only a clue.