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Thinking about blocking Semrushbot? Semrushbot naturally crawls your website the same as Googlebot, Ahrefsbot, GPTBot and Bingbot do.
Here’s the thing:
Semrushbot can take up a lot of your website’s bandwidth. This can lead to:
And the good news?
You can easily block Semrushbot and stop it from crawling your site altogether.
In this blog, you’re going to learn what you need to know about Semrushbot and how to block it from your website.
What Will I Learn?
Semrushbot is the web crawler for the popular SEO tool Semrush.
Its job is to crawl the web collecting SEO and marketing data for Semrush about each website it finds.
This data is then processed and stored in the Semrush data index to be used by Semrush subscribers.
Semrushbot bot works similarly to other SEO bots like Ahrefsbot.
It uses links to find new websites and analyses each site it finds based on the data it has been instructed to collect.
Data collected by Semrush is used for:
And so much more.
All of the powerful SEO tools that Semrush uses are thanks to Semrushbots ability to extract data from websites all over the world.
The easiest way to identify Semrushbot is through a reverse DNS lookup. You can do this manually but using a free tool is faster and easier.
First, get the Semrushbot IP address from your website’s server logs.
Then, head over to whatismyip.com and paste the Semrushbot IP address into the reverse DNS lookup tool.
The host domain name should be Semrush.com.
What does it mean if the domain is something other than Semrush.com?
You might have a fake bot masking itself as Semrushbot… which mean that you need to take the appropriate actions as quickly as possible to block that bot from your site.
Semrushbot is easy to block.
But whether you should block it comes down to whether you get any value from it.
The Semrushbot data offers a huge amount of practical value in the SEO and digital marketing world.
SEOs and marketers use the data it collects to:
…their websites for search engines.
You can also do very in-depth research and analysis on just about anything related to SEO. It’s what makes Semrush one of the best all in one SEO tools available.
Semrushbot can also offer a lot of value to you personally.
You can use your website data collected by Semrushbot to find areas to improve your own SEO. And because Semrush also collects data on your competitor’s websites, you can use that information to ultimately outrank them in the SERPs.
Talk about competitive advantage!
If you use OR are considering using Semrush in the future – don’t block it.
Curious about Semrush SEO tools? Take a look at my Semrush review.
Below, I listed 3 reasons why you should consider blocking Semrushbot so, keep reading.
This almost goes without saying… If you don’t use any of the Semrush tools, Semrushbot doesn’t really do anything for you.
It’s important to note:
Before you go off and block Semrushbot, carefully consider whether you will use Semrush in the future.
Why?
Because part of the power of Semrush is its historical index of data. They have years of data and this powers a lot of their tools.
Yes, you can always block Semrushbot now and allow it to crawl your site again later. But…you will miss out on the historical data that it consistently collects on your website.
So, if you think there might even be a slight chance of you using Semrush in the future… It’s probably best to let Semrushbot have access to your site.
No one wants a slow loading website, right?
When Semrushbot crawls your website it loads like it would for any other regular visitor. This uses up bandwidth.
If Semrushbot crawls your website too often, it may take up a lot of bandwidth. This means your website will load slowly for other visitors – hurting their user experience.
Let’s not forget: Website speed is also a Google ranking factor.
If you are seeing an unexpected spike in visits from Semrushbot and it’s chewing up your bandwidth, it might be time to stop it from visiting.
Semrushbot crawls your site links and collects data on each of them.
That data is added to the Semrush index and can be accessed by Semrush users. That includes your competitors.
It gives the ability to get an in-depth look at your website and potentially identify ways to improve their SEO.
Don’t want Semrush to index your links?
Block it.
There are 2 practical methods to block Semrushbot.
Read through them both and choose the best one for you.
You can block Semrushbot by updating your robots.txt file.
This has been the most common way to block any unwanted bot in the past. It’s also the easiest and quickest way to do it.
Your website robots.txt file gives specific instructions to any bot that wants to crawl your website. You can have generic rules that affect every bot or specific rules for just one bot.
Do the following to block Semrushbot using robots.txt.
Copy and paste this code into your robots.txt file:
User-agent: SemrushBot
Disallow: /
That’s it!
Semrushbot should obey the rule you just set up. But, be aware… it can take up to 2 weeks for Sermushbot to discover the new disallow rules.
Semrush claims that Semrushbot strictly follows all robots.txt instructions.
But there have been some users that claim Semrushbot still crawls their website even after implementing the appropriate disallow rule.
If you want to take complete control at the server level – Method 2 will be your best option.
Think of your .htaccess file like a security guard standing at the front gate of your website. This security guard has the power to see who the bot is and what they are trying to access on your site.
With the .htaccess file method, you will be blocking Semrushbot based on its user agents.
To block Semrushbot using its user agent, copy and paste the following code into your website .htaccess file.
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT}
SemrushBot |
This should take care of it.
Now you should have a clear idea of what Semrushbot does and how you can block it (if you choose to).
If Semrushbot is affecting your website you now have the power to block it. Use whichever of the 2 methods that you feel most comfortable with.
And remember:
If you plan to use any of the Semrush tools in the future, consider carefully whether you should block Semrushbot now or not.
It could end up affecting your future results.
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