scoop.it bot

What is scoop.it?

Scoop.it is a content curation and social publishing platform that allows users to discover, organize, and share content from across the web. Operated by Scoop.it Inc., the platform (scoop.it) combines automated content discovery with human curation to create topic-based collections. Launched in 2011, Scoop.it functions as a hybrid web crawler and content aggregation service that helps users find and share relevant content within specific interest areas.

The platform employs various specialized web crawlers to collect content from websites, RSS feeds, and other online sources. These crawlers identify themselves through several user-agent strings, including Scoop.it, Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; scoopit-crawler/3; +https://www.scoop.it/bot.html), and Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; spider-rs-ng; +https://www.scoop.it/bots.html; like Googlebot;). Each crawler serves a specific function within Scoop.it's content discovery ecosystem, from simple RSS checking to more comprehensive page analysis.

What distinguishes Scoop.it's crawlers is their transparent identification through documented user-agent strings and reference URLs, allowing website administrators to verify crawler legitimacy. The platform's crawlers are designed to respect standard web protocols while efficiently gathering information for its content curation service.

Why is scoop.it crawling my site?

Scoop.it crawls websites primarily to discover and index content that might be relevant to its users' curated topics. If your site appears in Scoop.it's crawl logs, it likely contains content that matches topics being followed or curated by Scoop.it users.

The platform typically focuses on publicly available content such as articles, blog posts, news items, and other shareable media. Scoop.it's crawlers may visit your site when:

1. A Scoop.it user has manually added your content to their curated topic
2. Your site contains an RSS feed that's being monitored for updates
3. Your content has been algorithmically identified as potentially relevant to existing topics
4. Your site links to or is linked from other content already in the Scoop.it ecosystem

Crawl frequency varies based on content update patterns and user interest, with more popular sources receiving more frequent visits. This crawling is generally considered authorized as long as it respects standard robots exclusion protocols and website terms of service.

What is the purpose of scoop.it?

Scoop.it serves as a content discovery and curation platform that helps individuals and organizations find, organize, and share relevant content. Its primary functions include:

• Enabling users to create topic-based content collections that showcase their expertise or interests
• Providing a discovery mechanism for finding quality content within specific niches
• Offering a social publishing platform where curated content can be shared across multiple channels
• Building connections between content creators and audiences interested in specific topics

For website owners, Scoop.it can provide additional visibility and traffic by exposing content to new audiences interested in related topics. When Scoop.it users "scoop" content from your site, they create backlinks and social sharing opportunities that can drive referral traffic. The platform preserves attribution by maintaining links to original sources and author credits.

However, as with any content aggregation service, there are considerations around how much content is extracted and displayed within the Scoop.it platform versus driving traffic to the original source.

How do I block scoop.it?

Scoop.it's crawlers respect the standard robots.txt protocol, making it straightforward to control their access to your website. To completely block all Scoop.it crawlers, add the following directives to your robots.txt file:

User-agent: scoopit-crawler
Disallow: /

User-agent: Scoop.it
Disallow: /

User-agent: spider-rs-ng
Disallow: /

For more granular control, you can restrict access to specific sections of your site while allowing the crawlers to access other areas:

User-agent: scoopit-crawler
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /members/
Allow: /

If you want to reduce crawl frequency rather than blocking access entirely, you can implement a crawl-delay directive, though support for this varies across crawlers:

User-agent: scoopit-crawler
Crawl-delay: 10

Blocking Scoop.it's crawlers will prevent your content from appearing in users' curated topics, potentially reducing referral traffic from the platform. However, it will also stop any unwanted resource consumption from frequent crawling. For specific issues or questions about Scoop.it's crawlers, you can reference their bot documentation page linked in their user-agent strings for more information or contact options.