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# AhrefsBot

> AhrefsBot is a SEO tool crawler run by Ahrefs. It powers Ahrefs' marketing data platform and Yep, Ahrefs' search engine. A second bot, AhrefsSiteAudit, powers Ahrefs' Site Audit tool.

- Operator: Ahrefs
- Kind: SEO tool crawler
- robots.txt token: AhrefsBot, AhrefsSiteAudit
- Follows robots.txt: yes
- Source: https://ahrefs.com/robot (checked 2026-11-05)
- Page: https://invisit.dev/bots/ahrefsbot

## What is AhrefsBot?

It powers Ahrefs' marketing data platform and Yep, Ahrefs' search engine. A second bot, AhrefsSiteAudit, powers Ahrefs' Site Audit tool.

Crawls for an SEO product: backlink indexes, site audits, rank data. It sends no visitors; blocking it is common and harmless.

Only a site's verified owner can let AhrefsSiteAudit ignore robots.txt on that site. Crawl-delay is followed for HTML pages but not for assets loaded while rendering JavaScript.

- [Ahrefs’s documentation](https://ahrefs.com/robot)

## AhrefsBot user agent

Ahrefs documents these user agents for AhrefsBot. Version numbers in it change over time, so match on the name, not the whole string.

```
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; AhrefsBot/7.0; +http://ahrefs.com/robot/)
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; AhrefsSiteAudit/6.1; +http://ahrefs.com/robot/site-audit)
```

## Should you block AhrefsBot?

Block it freely if the load bothers you. It sends no visitors; the only cost is that the tool’s users, your competitors included, see less of your site.

## How to block AhrefsBot in robots.txt

Add a group for its tokens to robots.txt at the root of your site.

A bot follows only the group that names it, so it ignores your `User-agent: *` rules once it has a group of its own. Repeat any paths you also want kept from it there.

```
User-agent: AhrefsBot
User-agent: AhrefsSiteAudit
Disallow: /
```

- [Build a robots.txt for AI bots](https://invisit.dev/tools/robots-txt-generator)

## How to verify a request is really AhrefsBot

Anyone can send any user agent, so the string alone proves nothing.

Ahrefs publishes the IP ranges AhrefsBot crawls from. A request that claims to be AhrefsBot from any other address is not AhrefsBot.

Or check by reverse DNS: look up the hostname of the request’s IP, confirm it ends in `ahrefs.com` or `ahrefs.net`, then look that hostname up again and confirm it points back to the same IP.

- [AhrefsBot IP ranges](https://api.ahrefs.com/v3/public/crawler-ip-ranges)

## See when AhrefsBot reads your site

Bots don’t run JavaScript analytics, so a script tag never sees them. invisit records crawler reads on the server instead, through its server SDK or a Cloudflare Worker, and shows which bots read which pages, next to your visitors.

- [Track crawlers with invisit](https://invisit.dev/docs/server/sdk#crawler-reads)

## Common questions

### What is AhrefsBot?

AhrefsBot is a SEO tool crawler run by Ahrefs. It powers Ahrefs' marketing data platform and Yep, Ahrefs' search engine. A second bot, AhrefsSiteAudit, powers Ahrefs' Site Audit tool.

### Is AhrefsBot safe to block?

Block it freely if the load bothers you. It sends no visitors; the only cost is that the tool’s users, your competitors included, see less of your site.

### How do I block AhrefsBot?

Add “User-agent: AhrefsBot” followed by “Disallow: /” to your robots.txt.