hypestat bot

What is hypestat?

Hypestat is a web analytics and SEO analysis service that collects data about websites to provide statistics and performance metrics. Operated by HypeStat.com, this service functions as a web crawler that systematically scans publicly accessible web pages to gather information about traffic, rankings, backlinks, and other SEO-related metrics. The crawler identifies itself in server logs with the user-agent string Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; hypestat/1.0; +https://hypestat.com/bot), making it easily identifiable to website administrators.

HypeStat.com provides free statistics and analytics where website owners and marketers can find information about virtually any website, including traffic estimates, SEO performance, and competitive analysis. The crawler behaves like other SEO analysis tools, visiting websites to collect data that powers its analytics platform. Unlike some other crawlers, Hypestat's visitation frequency isn't fixed but varies based on factors like website popularity and content updates. You can learn more about their services at HypeStat.com.

Why is hypestat crawling my site?

Hypestat crawls websites to collect data for its analytics platform. When you see this crawler in your logs, it's typically gathering information about your site's content, structure, and performance metrics. It's looking for data points such as keyword usage, page load times, backlink profiles, and other SEO-relevant information.

The crawler may visit your site periodically to keep its data current, with more popular sites or those with frequent content updates potentially receiving more frequent visits. Hypestat's crawler is triggered by its need to maintain up-to-date statistics in its database, especially for websites that are actively being analyzed or compared with competitors on its platform.

This crawling is generally considered authorized as it follows standard web protocols and respects robots.txt directives. The crawler is collecting publicly available information that anyone with a browser could access, but it does so in an automated fashion to power its analytics service.

What is the purpose of hypestat?

Hypestat's purpose is to provide website analytics and SEO intelligence. The service aggregates data from millions of websites to offer insights into traffic statistics, competitive analysis, backlink profiles, and keyword rankings. This information helps website owners, digital marketers, and SEO professionals understand their online performance and benchmark against competitors.

The data collected by Hypestat's crawler supports its web analytics platform, which offers features like traffic estimation, website valuation, technology stack identification, and performance metrics. For website owners, this can provide value by offering a third-party perspective on their site's performance and competitive standing without requiring them to install additional tracking code.

The service operates on a freemium model, providing basic website statistics freely while offering more detailed analytics through its platform. This makes it particularly useful for smaller businesses or individuals seeking cost-effective SEO insights.

How do I block hypestat?

If you prefer not to have Hypestat crawl your website, you can block it using your robots.txt file. Hypestat respects standard robots.txt directives, making this the simplest method to control its access. To completely block Hypestat from crawling your site, add the following to your robots.txt file:

User-agent: hypestat
Disallow: /

This tells the Hypestat crawler not to access any part of your website. If you want to allow Hypestat to crawl certain sections while restricting others, you can specify paths:

User-agent: hypestat
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /members/
Allow: /

This would block Hypestat from the /private/ and /members/ directories while allowing access to other areas of your site.

Blocking Hypestat will prevent your site from appearing in their analytics platform with updated information. This means you won't benefit from the potential visibility their service provides, but you'll reduce the crawling load on your server. For most websites, the impact of Hypestat's crawling is minimal, so blocking it is primarily a matter of preference rather than necessity. If you're experiencing excessive crawling that impacts server performance, you might consider implementing a crawl-delay directive, though this isn't specific to Hypestat.