What is TinEye-bot?

TinEye-bot is a specialized web crawler operated by Idee Inc., the company behind TinEye, a reverse image search engine. This crawler systematically navigates the web to discover and index images for TinEye's search service. Unlike general-purpose search engine crawlers, TinEye-bot focuses exclusively on visual content, building a comprehensive database of images that powers TinEye's ability to find matching images across the internet.

The bot identifies itself in server logs through several user agent strings, including Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; TinEye-bot/1.31; +http://www.tineye.com/crawler.html) for its dedicated crawler and Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/121.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 TinEye/1.0 (via http://www.tineye.com/) when operating in browser-emulation mode. These identifiers allow website administrators to recognize TinEye's crawler in their access logs.

TinEye-bot's distinctive characteristic is its focus on analyzing and indexing images based on their visual characteristics rather than relying solely on metadata or filenames. This approach enables TinEye to match images even when they've been cropped, color-adjusted, or otherwise modified.

Why is TinEye-bot crawling my site?

TinEye-bot visits websites to discover and index images for inclusion in TinEye's reverse image search database. If your site contains images—whether photographs, illustrations, infographics, or other visual content—TinEye-bot may crawl these resources to add them to its searchable index.

The frequency of TinEye-bot visits depends on several factors, including how many images your site hosts, how frequently you update your visual content, and the uniqueness or popularity of your images. Sites with large image collections or regularly updated visual content may experience more frequent crawling.

TinEye-bot's crawling is generally considered authorized web activity. Like other legitimate search engine crawlers, it identifies itself clearly and respects standard access control mechanisms.

What is the purpose of TinEye-bot?

TinEye-bot supports TinEye's reverse image search service, which allows users to upload an image or provide an image URL to find where that image appears online. Unlike text-based search engines, TinEye focuses on finding exact and modified matches of images rather than similar-looking images or images with matching metadata.

The data collected by TinEye-bot is used to build and maintain TinEye's image fingerprint database. When users perform a reverse image search, TinEye compares the submitted image's visual fingerprint against this database to find matches.

For website owners, TinEye's service can provide value by helping protect copyright and track image usage across the web. Content creators, photographers, and artists can use TinEye to discover where their work appears online, potentially identifying unauthorized usage.

How do I block TinEye-bot?

TinEye-bot respects the standard robots.txt protocol, making it straightforward to control its access to your site. To completely block TinEye-bot from crawling your entire website, add the following directives to your robots.txt file:

User-agent: TinEye-bot
Disallow: /

If you want to allow TinEye-bot on most of your site but restrict access to specific sections, you can use more targeted directives:

User-agent: TinEye-bot
Disallow: /private-images/
Disallow: /restricted-content/

Blocking TinEye-bot means your images won't appear in TinEye's reverse image search results. This could be beneficial if you want to limit the discoverability of your visual content or prevent others from easily finding where your images are used. However, it also means you won't benefit from TinEye's ability to help track potential unauthorized use of your images across the web.

For most websites with publicly available images, allowing TinEye-bot access aligns with the open nature of the web and can provide indirect benefits through increased visibility and copyright monitoring capabilities.

TinEye-bot