What is TurnitinBot?
TurnitinBot is a web crawler operated by Turnitin, an education technology company that provides plagiarism detection and academic integrity solutions. The bot collects web content to build Turnitin's database for checking submissions and detecting plagiarism with comprehensive internet coverage. You can set up Agent Analytics to see when TurnitinBot visits your website.
Overview
| Operated By | Turnitin |
| 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
TurnitinBot's traffic pattern depends on the intelligence being collected. It may revisit specific pages on a schedule, crawl broader sections of your site, or appear only when information is requested. Its request scope and frequency reflect the underlying objective.
TurnitinBot's User Agent
| User Agent | TurnitinBot (https://turnitin.com/robot/crawlerinfo.html) |
How To Block TurnitinBot With Robots.txt
Add this rule to your robots.txt file to block TurnitinBot from accessing your website, or use Automatic Robots.txt to block all intelligence gatherers at once. You can customize which pages are blocked by swapping out / for a different path.
User-agent: TurnitinBot # https://knownagents.com/agents/turnitinbot
Disallow: /Insights for TurnitinBot
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
12% of top websites block TurnitinBot in their robots.txts.
Overall Intelligence Gatherer Traffic
3.3% of all web traffic came from intelligence gatherers.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I Block TurnitinBot?
Confirm TurnitinBot's purpose before blocking it. Intelligence gatherers may collect competitive research, measure advertisements, or evaluate pages for brand safety. Weigh any benefit against sharing business or page-level data with its operator or clients. For context, 12% of the top websites we track currently have robots.txt rules for TurnitinBot.
Does TurnitinBot Follow Robots.txt Rules?
Yes. TurnitinBot 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 TurnitinBot respects it.
Does TurnitinBot Access Private Content?
No special access. TurnitinBot can read publicly available pages but cannot bypass authentication. Assume anything you publish openly may be collected.
How Can I Tell if TurnitinBot Is Visiting My Website?
Agent Analytics tracks TurnitinBot visits in real time. You can also check your server logs for requests whose user-agent string contains "TurnitinBot". Traffic may range from repeated requests to the same pages to broader crawls or one-off fetches. Because TurnitinBot does not publish a verification method, any client can claim its identity and a log match is only a clue.
Why Is TurnitinBot Visiting My Website?
Turnitin or one of its clients may be gathering competitive intelligence, measuring advertisements, or evaluating content for brand safety. The pages requested reflect the underlying objective.