Ever marvel which search engine optimization bots are probably the most blocked? This could affect the standard of the information the instruments present.
Blocking these bots will principally affect the hyperlink index of the instruments. They gained’t be capable to crawl the pages, to allow them to’t test the place these pages are linking. It doesn’t matter for visitors estimates, key phrase rankings, prime pages, and so on. These are constructed from completely different knowledge sources.
For Ahrefs, it might additionally affect the web page historical past characteristic that reveals adjustments to your pages over time, which you may want sooner or later. Ahrefsbot additionally powers the index for our search engine, Yep.com, so blocking Ahrefsbot means you wouldn’t present in Yep’s search outcomes.
We checked out ~140 million web sites to see how typically search engine optimization bots have been blocked. I need to give an enormous because of our knowledge scientist Xibeijia Guan for pulling this knowledge.
Listed here are the highest 3 most blocked search engine optimization bots:
- MJ12bot (Majestic). Blocked by 6.49% of all web sites.
- SemrushBot. Blocked by 6.34% of all web sites.
- AhrefsBot. Blocked by 6.31% of all web sites.
We regarded on the whole variety of web sites blocking the bots. There are numerous methods to dam bots with robots.txt, and this accounts for all of them together with:
- Specific blocks, the place the bot is talked about and disallowed
- Basic blocks, the place all bots could also be blocked
- Any situations the place a directive allowed the bot, after blocking all bots
Caveats: this doesn’t embrace another block varieties comparable to firewalls or IP blocks.
As I discussed earlier, probably the most blocked bot is MJ12bot from Majestic. I think there are a pair causes for this.
- They’re a distributed crawler, which means you possibly can’t search for or block them by IPs, which makes them much less trusted.
- They’ve been crawling the online for longer.
- They’ve a smaller person base than extra common search engine optimization instruments and due to this fact much less leverage to take away any blocks.
Listed here are probably the most blocked search engine optimization bots:
And the entire web sites blocking search engine optimization bots:
Right here’s the knowledge:
| Bot Identify | Depend | Proportion % | Bot Operator |
|---|---|---|---|
| MJ12bot | 9081205 | 6.49 | Majestic |
| SemrushBot | 8868486 | 6.34 | Semrush |
| AhrefsBot | 8831316 | 6.31 | Ahrefs |
| dotbot | 8569766 | 6.13 | Moz |
| BLEXBot | 8374216 | 5.99 | search engine optimization PowerSuite |
| serpstatbot | 7878935 | 5.63 | Serpstat |
| DataForSeoBot | 7872939 | 5.63 | DataForSEO |
| SemrushBot-CT | 7855400 | 5.62 | Semrush |
| Barkrowler | 7804425 | 5.58 | Babbar |
| SemrushBot-BA | 7796785 | 5.57 | Semrush |
| SemrushBot-SWA | 7789812 | 5.57 | Semrush |
| SemrushBot-SI | 7789062 | 5.57 | Semrush |
| SEOkicks | 7758904 | 5.55 | SEOkicks |
| Screaming Frog search engine optimization Spider | 7711108 | 5.51 | Screaming Frog |
| linkdexbot | 7704425 | 5.51 | LinkDex |
| DomainStatsBot | 7696944 | 5.5 | Domainstats |
| ZoomBot | 7669495 | 5.48 | SEOZoom |
| SiteCheckerBotCrawler | 7666545 | 5.48 | Sitechecker |
| Cocolyzebot | 7666233 | 5.48 | Cocolyze |
| SeobilityBot | 7664228 | 5.48 | Seobility |
| SenutoBot | 7655145 | 5.47 | Senuto |
| hypestat | 7648671 | 5.47 | HypeStat |
| online-webceo-bot | 7648444 | 5.47 | WebCEO |
| BrightEdge Crawler | 7648139 | 5.47 | BrightEdge |
| SEOlizer | 7648112 | 5.47 | SEOLizer |
It will get just a little extra sophisticated to investigate. For the above, we regarded on the primary robots.txt file for a web site, however each subdomain can have their very own set of directions. If we take a look at the ~461M robots.txt in whole, then probably the most blocked search engine optimization bot is SemrushBot at 5.76%. Listed here are the highest 5:
- SemrushBot: 5.76%
- Dotbot (Moz): 5.34%
- MJ12bot (Majestic): 4.96%
- BLEXBot: 4.88%
- Ahrefsbot: 4.67%
For this measure, we’re wanting solely at instances the place a specific bot is disallowed. It doesn’t embrace any total disallow statements or instances the place solely sure bots could also be allowed. In these instances, web site homeowners went out of their approach to particularly block sure bots.
Majestic’s bot is probably the most focused, adopted by Moz’s bot.
Listed here are probably the most blocked search engine optimization bots by express mentions:
Listed here are the variety of web sites explicitly blocking search engine optimization bots:
Right here’s the knowledge:
| Bot Identify | Depend | Proportion % | Bot Operator |
|---|---|---|---|
| MJ12bot | 2000372 | 1.43 | Majestic |
| dotbot | 1402305 | 1 | Moz |
| AhrefsBot | 1350771 | 0.97 | Ahrefs |
| SemrushBot | 1285857 | 0.92 | Semrush |
| BLEXBot | 861184 | 0.62 | search engine optimization PowerSuite |
| serpstatbot | 354683 | 0.25 | Serpstat |
| DataForSeoBot | 284694 | 0.2 | DataForSEO |
| Barkrowler | 276332 | 0.2 | Babbar |
| SEOkicks | 219961 | 0.16 | SEOkicks |
| SemrushBot-CT | 211895 | 0.15 | Semrush |
| linkdexbot | 166405 | 0.12 | Linkdex |
| DomainStatsBot | 157053 | 0.11 | Domainstats |
| SemrushBot-BA | 154349 | 0.11 | Semrush |
| SemrushBot-SI | 147999 | 0.11 | Semrush |
| SemrushBot-SWA | 146261 | 0.1 | Semrush |
| ZoomBot | 125310 | 0.09 | SEOZoom |
| SiteCheckerBotCrawler | 122574 | 0.09 | Sitechecker |
| Cocolyzebot | 121737 | 0.09 | Cocolyze |
| SeobilityBot | 117558 | 0.08 | Seobility |
| Screaming Frog search engine optimization Spider | 87673 | 0.06 | Screaming Frog |
| SenutoBot | 54978 | 0.04 | Senuto |
| hypestat | 861 | 0 | HypeStat |
| SenutoBot | 54978 | 0.04 | Senuto |
| hypestat | 861 | 0 | HypeStat |
| online-webceo-bot | 659 | 0 | WebCEO |
| BrightEdge Crawler | 289 | 0 | BrightEdge |
| SEOlizer | 253 | 0 | SEOLizer |
We regarded on the prime 1M websites by DR, which aligns to websites with a DR >45. Semrush is probably the most blocked adopted by Majestic and Moz.
Right here’s the way it breaks down for every particular person bot in several classes of internet sites. The highest 3 are:
- Autos_and_Vehicles: 39%
- Books_and_Literature: 27%
- Real_Estate: 17%
Going by the bot requests in Cloudflare Radar, Ahrefs is by far the quickest crawler within the search engine optimization area. ~4.6x sooner than Moz and ~6.7x sooner than Semrush.
