What is Pinterestbot?
Pinterestbot is Pinterest's web crawler that fetches content from websites to create previews when users pin links to the platform. The bot collects metadata, images, and descriptions to enable Pinterest to show rich previews of pinned content to users. You can set up Agent Analytics to see when Pinterestbot visits your website.
Overview
| Operated By | |
| 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
Pinterestbot 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.
Pinterestbot's User Agent
| User Agent | Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/121.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 (compatible; Pinterestbot/1.0; +https://www.pinterest.com/bot.html) |
How To Block Pinterestbot With Robots.txt
Add this rule to your robots.txt file to request that Pinterestbot 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: Pinterestbot # https://knownagents.com/agents/pinterestbot
Disallow: /Insights for Pinterestbot
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
4% of top websites block Pinterestbot 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 Pinterestbot.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I Block Pinterestbot?
Usually not. Blocking Pinterestbot 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, 4% of the top websites we track currently have robots.txt rules for Pinterestbot.
Does Pinterestbot Follow Robots.txt Rules?
No. Pinterestbot 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 Pinterestbot Access Private Content?
No. Pinterestbot 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 Pinterestbot Is Visiting My Website?
Agent Analytics tracks Pinterestbot visits in real time. You can also check your server logs for requests whose user-agent string contains "Pinterestbot". Look for a page and its preview assets being requested without follow-up navigation. Because Pinterestbot does not publish a verification method, any client can claim its identity and a log match is only a clue.
Why Is Pinterestbot Visiting My Website?
Someone shared a link to your page. Pinterestbot 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.