What is SeobilityBot?

SeobilityBot is an SEO-focused web crawler operated by Seobility, a German company specializing in search engine optimization tools and services. First seen in 2019, this bot functions as a technical analysis crawler that systematically visits websites to collect data for SEO analysis purposes.

SeobilityBot works by scanning website content, structure, and technical elements to provide website owners with insights about their SEO performance. It crawls pages to analyze factors like page speed, metadata, content quality, mobile-friendliness, and other SEO-relevant metrics. When visiting your site, the bot identifies itself with the user agent string SeobilityBot (SEO Tool; https://www.seobility.net/sites/bot.html), making it easily identifiable in server logs.

Unlike search engine crawlers that index content for search results, SeobilityBot specifically collects data to power Seobility's SEO analysis tools and reports. The bot operates from German IP addresses, primarily from the Hetzner Online datacenter, which can help administrators verify legitimate traffic from this service.

Why is SeobilityBot crawling my site?

SeobilityBot typically crawls your website when someone (either you or a third party) has requested an SEO analysis of your site using Seobility's tools. The bot visits to gather technical data, analyze content quality, check mobile responsiveness, evaluate page loading speeds, and assess other SEO factors that contribute to search engine rankings.

The frequency of visits depends on how often your site is analyzed through Seobility's platform. This could range from one-time analyses to regular monitoring if someone has set up ongoing SEO tracking for your domain. Unlike search engine crawlers that visit periodically to keep their index fresh, SeobilityBot's visits are typically triggered by specific analysis requests.

These crawls are generally considered authorized when initiated by the website owner or their SEO team. However, third parties can also analyze your site without your explicit permission, which is common practice in competitive SEO research.

What is the purpose of SeobilityBot?

SeobilityBot serves to power Seobility's SEO analysis and monitoring tools by collecting real-time data about websites. The primary goal is to provide website owners, SEO professionals, and marketers with comprehensive insights about their site's search engine optimization status.

The data collected helps identify technical issues, content gaps, and optimization opportunities that might affect search engine rankings. Seobility processes this information to generate detailed reports highlighting strengths and weaknesses in a site's SEO implementation, along with recommendations for improvement.

For website owners, this service can provide valuable insights that help improve search visibility and user experience. The bot's analysis can identify issues that might otherwise go unnoticed, such as broken links, missing meta tags, slow-loading pages, or mobile display problems.

How do I block SeobilityBot?

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

User-agent: SeobilityBot
Disallow: /

This configuration prevents SeobilityBot from accessing any part of your website. If you only want to restrict access to certain sections, you can specify particular directories or files:

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

Blocking SeobilityBot won't negatively impact your search engine rankings since it's not affiliated with any search engine. However, you'll lose potential SEO insights if you or your team use Seobility's tools for website analysis.

If you're concerned about server load from crawling, a more balanced approach might be to slow down the bot rather than blocking it completely. You can do this by using the crawl-delay directive in your robots.txt file:

User-agent: SeobilityBot
Crawl-delay: 10

This instructs the bot to wait 10 seconds between requests, reducing the load on your server while still allowing analysis. Since the bot is legitimate and provides potentially useful SEO data, controlling its behavior through robots.txt is typically sufficient for most website administrators.

SeobilityBot