AhrefsBot

What does AhrefsBot do?

AhrefsBot crawls and renders web pages to collect website data, backlink information, and index content and assets. This data powers the Ahrefs SEO toolkit (Site Explorer, Site Audit, and related features) as well as the Yep search engine. Pages indexed by AhrefsBot can appear in Yep search results with clickable source links, and your backlink data surfaces in Ahrefs product interfaces used by millions of SEO professionals.

Should I allow and optimize for AhrefsBot to drive organic growth?

Allowing AhrefsBot provides two distinct growth channels. First, your pages can appear in Yep search results with direct source links, driving referral traffic. Second, accurate crawl data in the Ahrefs SEO toolkit means your backlink profile and site health are visible to SEO professionals, content marketers, and potential link partners who use Ahrefs daily. Blocking AhrefsBot removes your site from both of these ecosystems. Unless you have a specific reason to block it, allowing access is the better default.

Data Usage & Training

Ahrefs documents crawling for indexing and analytics purposes, powering its SEO tools and the Yep search engine. Whether crawled content is also used to train AI models is not addressed in Ahrefs' public documentation. If this is a concern, contact Ahrefs support at [email protected] for clarification.

How AhrefsBot Accesses Content

Here's how AhrefsBot accesses your site and understands your content:

• Fetches HTML and renders JavaScript fully
• Identifies as Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; AhrefsBot/7.0; +http://ahrefs.com/robot/)
• Supports Crawl-delay directives, with a caveat that JS rendering may trigger simultaneous asset requests
• Adjusts crawl rate based on server responses, reducing frequency on 4xx/5xx errors
• Can be verified via published IP ranges or reverse DNS (hostnames ending in ahrefs.com or ahrefs.net)

AhrefsBot crawls continuously for indexing purposes, adjusting its rate based on server health. Site Audit and other Ahrefs features may also trigger user-initiated or scheduled crawls from paying Ahrefs customers.

How to Block or Control AhrefsBot

To block AhrefsBot via robots.txt: User-agent: AhrefsBot Disallow: / You can also block specific paths while allowing the rest of your site. For IP-based blocking, Ahrefs publishes its crawler IP ranges at https://api.ahrefs.com/v3/public/crawler-ip-ranges and https://help.ahrefs.com/en/articles/78658-what-is-the-list-of-your-ip-ranges. To verify a request is genuinely from AhrefsBot, check that the reverse DNS hostname ends with ahrefs.com or ahrefs.net. For verified site owner controls, contact [email protected].

Common Issues & Troubleshooting

Watch out for these common problems when working with AhrefsBot:

• Firewall, CDN, or security plugins (ModSecurity, Sucuri, Cloudflare) block the AhrefsBot user-agent or its IP addresses by default
• A robots.txt returning 404 prevents AhrefsBot from indexing the site entirely
• Crawl-delay interacts unexpectedly with JavaScript rendering, since rendering a single page may trigger multiple simultaneous asset requests
• Overly broad Disallow rules in robots.txt unintentionally block AhrefsBot alongside other bots
• High crawl volume on smaller servers can cause performance issues if no Crawl-delay is set