Daum bot

What is Daum?

Daum is a web crawler (bot) operated by Kakao Corp., a major South Korean internet company. The crawler is part of Daum's search engine infrastructure, which is one of South Korea's leading search platforms. Daum's crawler has been active since at least 2009, with various versions released over time. It's technically classified as a search engine bot designed to discover, index, and catalog web content for inclusion in Daum's search results.

The crawler works by systematically visiting websites, following links, and analyzing content to build and maintain Daum's search index. It identifies itself in server logs through several user-agent strings, with common variants including Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Daum/4.1; +http://cs.daum.net/faq/15/4118.html?faqId=28966), Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE or Firefox mutant; not on Windows server;) Daumoa/4.0, and daumoa,damoa,daum,daumos,duamoa,duam,duamos. The bot originates from Korean IP addresses, typically from Kakao Corp.'s data centers.

Daum has evolved through several versions, with Daumoa/2.0, Daumoa/3.0, and Daumoa/4.0 representing major iterations. There's also a specialized image crawler that identifies as Daumoa-image/1.0, specifically designed to index images for Daum's image search feature.

Why is Daum crawling my site?

Daum crawls websites to discover and index content for its search engine users. It's particularly interested in finding new pages, updated content, and relevant information that Korean-language users might search for. The bot visits sites to:

1. Discover new content to add to Daum's search index
2. Update existing indexed content when changes occur
3. Verify link structures and site architecture
4. Collect information about images and multimedia content

The frequency of Daum's visits depends on your site's popularity in South Korea, how often your content changes, and its relevance to Korean users. Sites with Korean-language content or those popular with Korean audiences will likely see more frequent crawling activity. The crawling is generally authorized as part of normal search engine operations, similar to how Google or Bing crawl the web.

What is the purpose of Daum?

Daum's crawler exists to support Daum's search engine by maintaining a comprehensive and up-to-date index of web content. The search engine is a core product of Kakao Corp. and serves primarily Korean-speaking users. The data collected by Daum is used to:

1. Build and maintain the search index that powers Daum's search results
2. Analyze content relevance for search queries
3. Provide users with fresh, accurate search results
4. Support Daum's various services including web search, image search, and news aggregation

For website owners, being included in Daum's index can provide value by making your content discoverable to Korean-speaking audiences. This can be particularly beneficial for businesses targeting the Korean market or content creators with Korean-language materials. The bot's crawling is generally benign and follows standard web crawling practices.

How do I block Daum?

Daum respects the robots.txt protocol, making it relatively straightforward to control its access to your site. To block Daum completely, add the following directives to your robots.txt file:

User-agent: Daumoa
Disallow: /

User-agent: Daum
Disallow: /

To block only specific sections of your site from being crawled, you can specify particular paths:

User-agent: Daumoa
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /members/
Disallow: /restricted-content/

Blocking Daum will prevent your content from appearing in Daum's search results, which might reduce visibility to Korean users. However, if your site doesn't target Korean-speaking audiences, this impact may be minimal. If you experience excessive crawling that impacts server performance, you might consider using the robots.txt to control crawl rate rather than blocking entirely.

If you need more information about the bot or have specific concerns, you can reference the documentation link provided in the user-agent string, though note that it will likely be in Korean as it's primarily serving the Korean market.