Ever marvel which web optimization bots are essentially the most blocked? This could impression the standard of the info the instruments present.
Blocking these bots will principally impression the hyperlink index of the instruments. They gained’t be capable to crawl the pages, to allow them to’t test the place these pages are linking. It doesn’t matter for visitors estimates, key phrase rankings, prime pages, and many others. These are constructed from completely different knowledge sources.
For Ahrefs, it will additionally impression the web page historical past function that exhibits modifications to your pages over time, which you would possibly want in some unspecified time in the future. Ahrefsbot additionally powers the index for our search engine, Yep.com, so blocking Ahrefsbot means you wouldn’t present in Yep’s search outcomes.
We checked out ~140 million web sites to see how usually web optimization bots had been blocked. I wish to give an enormous because of our knowledge scientist Xibeijia Guan for pulling this knowledge.
Listed below are the highest 3 most blocked web optimization bots:
- MJ12bot (Majestic). Blocked by 6.49% of all web sites.
- SemrushBot. Blocked by 6.34% of all web sites.
- AhrefsBot. Blocked by 6.31% of all web sites.
We appeared on the whole variety of web sites blocking the bots. There are various methods to dam bots with robots.txt, and this accounts for all of them together with:
- Express blocks, the place the bot is talked about and disallowed
- Basic blocks, the place all bots could also be blocked
- Any situations the place a directive allowed the bot, after blocking all bots
Caveats: this doesn’t embody every other block varieties akin to firewalls or IP blocks.
As I discussed earlier, essentially the most blocked bot is MJ12bot from Majestic. I think there are a pair causes for this.
- They’re a distributed crawler, which means you may’t search for or block them by IPs, which makes them much less trusted.
- They’ve been crawling the online for longer.
- They’ve a smaller person base than extra widespread web optimization instruments and subsequently much less leverage to take away any blocks.
Listed below are essentially the most blocked web optimization bots:

And the full web sites blocking web optimization bots:


Right here’s the knowledge:
Bot Title | Rely | Proportion % | Bot Operator |
---|---|---|---|
MJ12bot | 9081205 | 6.49 | Majestic |
SemrushBot | 8868486 | 6.34 | Semrush |
AhrefsBot | 8831316 | 6.31 | Ahrefs |
dotbot | 8569766 | 6.13 | Moz |
BLEXBot | 8374216 | 5.99 | web optimization PowerSuite |
serpstatbot | 7878935 | 5.63 | Serpstat |
DataForSeoBot | 7872939 | 5.63 | DataForSEO |
SemrushBot-CT | 7855400 | 5.62 | Semrush |
Barkrowler | 7804425 | 5.58 | Babbar |
SemrushBot-BA | 7796785 | 5.57 | Semrush |
SemrushBot-SWA | 7789812 | 5.57 | Semrush |
SemrushBot-SI | 7789062 | 5.57 | Semrush |
SEOkicks | 7758904 | 5.55 | SEOkicks |
Screaming Frog web optimization Spider | 7711108 | 5.51 | Screaming Frog |
linkdexbot | 7704425 | 5.51 | LinkDex |
DomainStatsBot | 7696944 | 5.5 | Domainstats |
ZoomBot | 7669495 | 5.48 | SEOZoom |
SiteCheckerBotCrawler | 7666545 | 5.48 | Sitechecker |
Cocolyzebot | 7666233 | 5.48 | Cocolyze |
SeobilityBot | 7664228 | 5.48 | Seobility |
SenutoBot | 7655145 | 5.47 | Senuto |
hypestat | 7648671 | 5.47 | HypeStat |
online-webceo-bot | 7648444 | 5.47 | WebCEO |
BrightEdge Crawler | 7648139 | 5.47 | BrightEdge |
SEOlizer | 7648112 | 5.47 | SEOLizer |
It will get somewhat extra sophisticated to research. For the above, we appeared on the important robots.txt file for an internet site, however each subdomain can have their very own set of directions. If we take a look at the ~461M robots.txt in whole, then essentially the most blocked web optimization bot is SemrushBot at 5.76%. Listed below are the highest 5:
- SemrushBot: 5.76%
- Dotbot (Moz): 5.34%
- MJ12bot (Majestic): 4.96%
- BLEXBot: 4.88%
- Ahrefsbot: 4.67%
For this measure, we’re wanting solely at instances the place a specific bot is disallowed. It doesn’t embody any total disallow statements or instances the place solely sure bots could also be allowed. In these instances, web site house owners went out of their strategy to particularly block sure bots.
Majestic’s bot is essentially the most focused, adopted by Moz’s bot.
Listed below are essentially the most blocked web optimization bots by express mentions:


Listed below are the variety of web sites explicitly blocking web optimization bots:


Right here’s the knowledge:
Bot Title | Rely | Proportion % | Bot Operator |
---|---|---|---|
MJ12bot | 2000372 | 1.43 | Majestic |
dotbot | 1402305 | 1 | Moz |
AhrefsBot | 1350771 | 0.97 | Ahrefs |
SemrushBot | 1285857 | 0.92 | Semrush |
BLEXBot | 861184 | 0.62 | web optimization PowerSuite |
serpstatbot | 354683 | 0.25 | Serpstat |
DataForSeoBot | 284694 | 0.2 | DataForSEO |
Barkrowler | 276332 | 0.2 | Babbar |
SEOkicks | 219961 | 0.16 | SEOkicks |
SemrushBot-CT | 211895 | 0.15 | Semrush |
linkdexbot | 166405 | 0.12 | Linkdex |
DomainStatsBot | 157053 | 0.11 | Domainstats |
SemrushBot-BA | 154349 | 0.11 | Semrush |
SemrushBot-SI | 147999 | 0.11 | Semrush |
SemrushBot-SWA | 146261 | 0.1 | Semrush |
ZoomBot | 125310 | 0.09 | SEOZoom |
SiteCheckerBotCrawler | 122574 | 0.09 | Sitechecker |
Cocolyzebot | 121737 | 0.09 | Cocolyze |
SeobilityBot | 117558 | 0.08 | Seobility |
Screaming Frog web optimization Spider | 87673 | 0.06 | Screaming Frog |
SenutoBot | 54978 | 0.04 | Senuto |
hypestat | 861 | 0 | HypeStat |
SenutoBot | 54978 | 0.04 | Senuto |
hypestat | 861 | 0 | HypeStat |
online-webceo-bot | 659 | 0 | WebCEO |
BrightEdge Crawler | 289 | 0 | BrightEdge |
SEOlizer | 253 | 0 | SEOLizer |
We appeared on the prime 1M websites by DR, which aligns to websites with a DR >45. Semrush is essentially the most blocked adopted by Majestic and Moz.

Right here’s the way it breaks down for every particular person bot in numerous classes of internet sites. The highest 3 are:
- Autos_and_Vehicles: 39%
- Books_and_Literature: 27%
- Real_Estate: 17%


Going by the bot requests in Cloudflare Radar, Ahrefs is by far the quickest crawler within the web optimization house. ~4.6x quicker than Moz and ~6.7x quicker than Semrush.

