What is Spider?
Spider is a web crawler designed for AI projects, including AI agents, LLMs, RAG systems, and data analysis. It collects and converts web data into multiple formats including markdown, HTML, and text for AI training and fine-tuning purposes. You can set up Agent Analytics to see when Spider visits your website.
Category
| Operated By | Spider |
| Source | Official Website |
| Triggered By | Automated crawl |
| Used for AI Model Training | Yes |
| Affects AI Chat & Search Visibility | Not directly |
| Expected To Follow Robots.txt | Yes |
Why Is Spider Visiting My Website?
Your content matched the criteria Spider set for a training dataset. Spider typically discovers pages through external links, sitemaps, and seed lists rather than because someone selected your site individually.
Should I Block Spider?
Block Spider if you want more control over whether your work is used for AI training. Allowing it may increase the chance that your brand appears in AI-generated answers, but either choice leaves traditional search rankings unchanged. For context, 8% of the top websites we track currently have robots.txt rules for Spider.
How Do I Block Spider Using Robots.txt?
Add this rule to your robots.txt file to block Spider from accessing your website, or use Automatic Robots.txt to block all AI data scrapers at once. You can customize which pages are blocked by swapping out / for a different path.
User-agent: Spider # https://knownagents.com/agents/spider
Disallow: /Insights for Spider
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
Spider Traffic
Frequently Asked Questions
What Traffic Patterns Should I Expect From Spider?
Spider tends to make broad, high-volume sweeps across many pages. Timing is unpredictable: traffic may remain heavy throughout a collection pass, then stop entirely.
Does Spider Follow Robots.txt Rules?
Spider 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 Spider respects it.
Is Spider Used for AI Model Training?
Yes. Spider collects web content for use in AI training datasets. Blocking it limits future collection but cannot remove content that was collected previously.
Does Blocking Spider Affect AI Search or Citations?
Not directly. Blocking Spider limits collection for AI training rather than controlling a live AI search index or citation system.
Does Spider Access Private Content?
Not through legitimate access. Spider primarily targets public content, but some training-data scrapers also attempt to collect gated or paywalled pages. If content loads without authentication, assume it can be collected.
How Can I Verify a Request From Spider?
Agent Analytics tracks Spider visits in real time. You can also check your server logs for requests whose user-agent string contains "Spider". Look for high page counts, short gaps between requests, and deep traversal through linked content. Because Spider does not publish a verification method, any client can claim its identity and a log match is only a clue.