rogerbot

What is rogerbot?

Rogerbot is a web crawler operated by Moz (formerly SEOmoz), a company specializing in search engine optimization tools and services. This crawler is an integral part of Moz's SEO analysis platform, designed to collect and analyze website data for their suite of SEO tools. Rogerbot functions as a specialized indexing bot that systematically visits websites to gather data about their structure, content, and link profiles.

In server logs, rogerbot identifies itself with user agent strings typically formatted like rogerbot/1.2 (https://moz.com/help/guides/moz-procedures/what-is-rogerbot, rogerbot-crawler+aardwolf-crawler-XX@moz.com), where XX represents various numeric identifiers. The crawler operates as part of Moz's "Aardwolf" crawling infrastructure, which powers their backlink analysis and site auditing capabilities.

Rogerbot works by following links across the web, similar to search engine crawlers, but with a specific focus on collecting data relevant to SEO metrics. This includes discovering backlinks, analyzing page content, and evaluating technical SEO factors that Moz's tools report on. You can learn more about Moz's services at their official website.

Why is rogerbot crawling my site?

Rogerbot visits websites primarily to collect data for Moz's SEO analytics platform. If you're seeing rogerbot in your logs, it's likely crawling your site to:

1. Discover and analyze backlinks pointing to your domain or from your site to others
2. Gather information about your site's content, structure, and technical SEO elements
3. Monitor changes to your site that might affect SEO performance

The frequency of rogerbot's visits depends on several factors, including your site's authority, size, and how frequently it's updated. Higher-authority sites or those with many backlinks may experience more frequent crawling. Rogerbot's crawling is generally considered authorized as it follows standard web crawling protocols and respects robots.txt directives.

What is the purpose of rogerbot?

Rogerbot serves to power Moz's suite of SEO tools and services, including their Link Explorer, Site Crawl, and other analytics features. The data collected helps Moz customers analyze their websites' SEO performance, discover backlink opportunities, identify technical issues, and track their progress against competitors.

For website owners, rogerbot's crawling can indirectly provide value even if you don't use Moz's services. The data it collects contributes to the SEO ecosystem, potentially making your site more visible to Moz users who might discover your content or consider linking to your pages. This can drive referral traffic and improve your overall search visibility.

Moz uses the information gathered by rogerbot to calculate metrics like Domain Authority and Page Authority, which many SEO professionals use to evaluate website quality and potential search performance.

How do I block rogerbot?

Rogerbot respects the robots.txt protocol, making it straightforward to control its access to your site. If you wish to block rogerbot completely, add the following directives to your robots.txt file:

User-agent: rogerbot
Disallow: /

If you only want to prevent rogerbot from crawling certain sections of your site, you can specify particular directories or pages:

User-agent: rogerbot
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /members-only/
Allow: /

Blocking rogerbot will prevent your site from being included in Moz's index, which means your backlinks and other SEO metrics may not be accurately represented in their tools. This could potentially reduce your visibility to marketers and SEO professionals who use Moz's services to discover new websites and content opportunities.

If you're experiencing excessive crawling that impacts your server performance, but don't want to block rogerbot entirely, you might consider implementing a crawl-delay directive, though support for this varies by crawler. For more specific control, you can contact Moz directly through their support channels to discuss crawling issues or special requirements.