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.
Category
| Example User Agent | SmarshBot/1.0 |
| Operated By | Smarsh |
| Source | Official Website |
| Triggered By | Automated crawl |
| Used for AI Model Training | Not expected |
| Affects AI Chat & Search Visibility | Not directly |
| Expected To Follow Robots.txt | Yes |
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.
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.
How Do I Block SmarshBot Using 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 October 30, 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
SmarshBot Traffic
Frequently Asked Questions
What Traffic Patterns Should I Expect From SmarshBot?
SmarshBot periodically fetches complete pages rather than checking metadata alone. Visit frequency typically rises with your site's popularity and update cadence.
Does SmarshBot Follow Robots.txt Rules?
SmarshBot 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 SmarshBot respects it.
Is SmarshBot Used for AI Model Training?
Not ordinarily. SmarshBot is not categorized as an AI training scraper or data provider, so AI model training is not its expected purpose.
Does Blocking SmarshBot Affect AI Search or Citations?
Not directly. SmarshBot's expected purpose is not to supply an AI search index or retrieve pages for AI-generated answers.
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 Verify a Request From SmarshBot?
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.