What is SmarshBot?
SmarshBot is an archiving bot operated by Smarsh that crawls and captures web content for compliance management and regulatory recordkeeping purposes. Organizations use this service to maintain archives of web pages and online communications to meet legal and regulatory requirements. You can set up Agent Analytics to see when SmarshBot visits your website.
Overview
| Operated By | Smarsh |
| 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
SmarshBot periodically fetches complete pages rather than checking metadata alone. Visit frequency typically rises with your site's popularity and update cadence.
SmarshBot's User Agent
| User Agent | SmarshBot/1.0 |
How To Block SmarshBot With Robots.txt
Add this rule to your robots.txt file to block SmarshBot from accessing your website, or use Automatic Robots.txt to block all archivers at once. You can customize which pages are blocked by swapping out / for a different path.
User-agent: SmarshBot # https://knownagents.com/agents/smarshbot
Disallow: /Insights for SmarshBot
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
7% of top websites block SmarshBot in their robots.txts.
Overall Archiver Traffic
0.0% of all web traffic came from archivers.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I Block SmarshBot?
Rarely. SmarshBot preserves snapshots of your pages through redesigns, migrations, and broken links. Blocking it prevents future captures but does not remove existing snapshots. To remove those, you must contact the archive directly. For context, 7% of the top websites we track currently have robots.txt rules for SmarshBot.
Does SmarshBot Follow Robots.txt Rules?
Yes. SmarshBot 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 SmarshBot respects it.
Does SmarshBot Access Private Content?
No. SmarshBot archives only what an anonymous visitor can see. Anything public at crawl time may remain available in its archive long after you remove it from your site.
How Can I Tell if SmarshBot Is Visiting My Website?
Agent Analytics tracks SmarshBot visits in real time. You can also check your server logs for requests whose user-agent string contains "SmarshBot". Look for a page and its embedded assets being fetched again after a long interval. Because SmarshBot does not publish a verification method, any client can claim its identity and a log match is only a clue.
Why Is SmarshBot Visiting My Website?
SmarshBot is preserving your pages as part of a historical record. It returns periodically so the archive can capture how your content changes over time.