What is ZoteroTranslationServer?
ZoteroTranslationServer extracts citation metadata from URLs, DOIs, and ISBNs using Zotero translators to power Wikimedia's Citoid service for automated reference generation. You can set up Agent Analytics to see when ZoteroTranslationServer visits your website.
Overview
| Operated By | Wikimedia |
| Source | Official Website |
| Expected To Follow Robots.txt | No |
| Insights Last Updated | September 15, 2026 |
Do you operate this agent? Contact us to suggest an update.
Category
Expected Behavior
ZoteroTranslationServer 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.
ZoteroTranslationServer's User Agent
| User Agent | Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/110.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ZoteroTranslationServer/WMF (mailto:noc@wikimedia.org) |
How To Block ZoteroTranslationServer With Robots.txt
Add this rule to your robots.txt file to request that ZoteroTranslationServer 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: ZoteroTranslationServer # https://knownagents.com/agents/zoterotranslationserver
Disallow: /Insights for ZoteroTranslationServer
As of September 15, 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
6% of top websites block ZoteroTranslationServer in their robots.txts.
Overall Fetcher Traffic
1.8% of all web traffic came from fetchers.
Top Visited Website Categories
The types of websites most frequently visited by ZoteroTranslationServer.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I Block ZoteroTranslationServer?
Usually not. Blocking ZoteroTranslationServer 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, 6% of the top websites we track currently have robots.txt rules for ZoteroTranslationServer.
Does ZoteroTranslationServer Follow Robots.txt Rules?
No. ZoteroTranslationServer 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 ZoteroTranslationServer Access Private Content?
No. ZoteroTranslationServer 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 ZoteroTranslationServer Is Visiting My Website?
Agent Analytics tracks ZoteroTranslationServer visits in real time. You can also check your server logs for requests whose user-agent string contains "ZoteroTranslationServer". Look for a page and its preview assets being requested without follow-up navigation. Because ZoteroTranslationServer does not publish a verification method, any client can claim its identity and a log match is only a clue.
Why Is ZoteroTranslationServer Visiting My Website?
Someone shared a link to your page. ZoteroTranslationServer 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.