Better Uptime Bot
Better Stack •
Since 2020
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Official Docs
What is Better Uptime Bot?
Better Uptime Bot is the monitoring agent for Better Stack (formerly Better Uptime), a modern uptime monitoring and incident management platform. The bot performs regular health checks on configured URLs to detect outages, SSL certificate issues, and performance degradation. It sends alerts through various channels including email, SMS, Slack, and phone calls when issues are detected.
User Agent String
Better Uptime Bot
How to Control Better Uptime Bot
Block Completely
To prevent Better Uptime Bot from accessing your entire website, add this to your robots.txt file:
# Block Better Uptime Bot
User-agent: Better Uptime Bot
Disallow: /
Block Specific Directories
To restrict access to certain parts of your site while allowing others:
User-agent: Better Uptime Bot
Disallow: /admin/
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Allow: /public/
Set Crawl Delay
To slow down the crawl rate (note: not all bots respect this directive):
User-agent: Better Uptime Bot
Crawl-delay: 10
How to Verify Better Uptime Bot
Verification Method:
Check user agent string for Better Uptime Bot identifier
Check user agent string for Better Uptime Bot identifier
Learn more in the official documentation.
Detection Patterns
Multiple ways to detect Better Uptime Bot in your application:
Basic Pattern
/Better Uptime Bot/iStrict Pattern
/^Better Uptime Bot$/Flexible Pattern
/Better Uptime Bot[\s\/]?[\d\.]*?/iVendor Match
/.*Better Stack.*Better/iImplementation Examples
// PHP Detection for Better Uptime Bot
function detect_better_uptime_bot() {
$user_agent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] ?? '';
$pattern = '/Better Uptime Bot/i';
if (preg_match($pattern, $user_agent)) {
// Log the detection
error_log('Better Uptime Bot detected from IP: ' . $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']);
// Set cache headers
header('Cache-Control: public, max-age=3600');
header('X-Robots-Tag: noarchive');
// Optional: Serve cached version
if (file_exists('cache/' . md5($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']) . '.html')) {
readfile('cache/' . md5($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']) . '.html');
exit;
}
return true;
}
return false;
}
# Python/Flask Detection for Better Uptime Bot
import re
from flask import request, make_responsedef detect_better_uptime_bot():
user_agent = request.headers.get('User-Agent', '')
pattern = r'Better Uptime Bot'
if re.search(pattern, user_agent, re.IGNORECASE):
# Create response with caching
response = make_response()
response.headers['Cache-Control'] = 'public, max-age=3600'
response.headers['X-Robots-Tag'] = 'noarchive'
return True
return False# Django Middleware
class BetterUptimeBotMiddleware:
def __init__(self, get_response):
self.get_response = get_response
def __call__(self, request):
if self.detect_bot(request):
# Handle bot traffic
pass
return self.get_response(request)
// JavaScript/Node.js Detection for Better Uptime Bot
const express = require('express');
const app = express();// Middleware to detect Better Uptime Bot
function detectBetterUptimeBot(req, res, next) {
const userAgent = req.headers['user-agent'] || '';
const pattern = /Better Uptime Bot/i;
if (pattern.test(userAgent)) {
// Log bot detection
console.log('Better Uptime Bot detected from IP:', req.ip);
// Set cache headers
res.set({
'Cache-Control': 'public, max-age=3600',
'X-Robots-Tag': 'noarchive'
});
// Mark request as bot
req.isBot = true;
req.botName = 'Better Uptime Bot';
}
next();
}app.use(detectBetterUptimeBot);
# Apache .htaccess rules for Better Uptime Bot# Block completely
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Better Uptime Bot [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]# Or redirect to a static version
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Better Uptime Bot [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/static/
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /static/$1 [L]# Or set environment variable for PHP
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent "Better Uptime Bot" is_bot=1# Add cache headers for this bot
<If "%{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /Better Uptime Bot/i">
Header set Cache-Control "public, max-age=3600"
Header set X-Robots-Tag "noarchive"
</If>
# Nginx configuration for Better Uptime Bot# Map user agent to variable
map $http_user_agent $is_better_uptime_bot {
default 0;
~*Better Uptime Bot 1;
}server {
# Block the bot completely
if ($is_better_uptime_bot) {
return 403;
}
# Or serve cached content
location / {
if ($is_better_uptime_bot) {
root /var/www/cached;
try_files $uri $uri.html $uri/index.html @backend;
}
try_files $uri @backend;
}
# Add headers for bot requests
location @backend {
if ($is_better_uptime_bot) {
add_header Cache-Control "public, max-age=3600";
add_header X-Robots-Tag "noarchive";
}
proxy_pass http://backend;
}
}
Should You Block This Bot?
Recommendations based on your website type:
| Site Type | Recommendation | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|
| E-commerce | Optional | Evaluate based on bandwidth usage vs. benefits |
| Blog/News | Allow | Increases content reach and discoverability |
| SaaS Application | Block | No benefit for application interfaces; preserve resources |
| Documentation | Selective | Allow for public docs, block for internal docs |
| Corporate Site | Limit | Allow for public pages, block sensitive areas like intranets |
Advanced robots.txt Configurations
E-commerce Site Configuration
User-agent: Better Uptime Bot
Crawl-delay: 5
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /*?sort=
Disallow: /*?filter=
Disallow: /*&page=
Allow: /products/
Allow: /categories/
Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml
Publishing/Blog Configuration
User-agent: Better Uptime Bot
Crawl-delay: 10
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /drafts/
Disallow: /preview/
Disallow: /*?replytocom=
Allow: /
SaaS/Application Configuration
User-agent: Better Uptime Bot
Disallow: /app/
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /dashboard/
Disallow: /settings/
Allow: /
Allow: /pricing/
Allow: /features/
Allow: /docs/
Quick Reference
User Agent Match
Better Uptime BotRobots.txt Name
Better Uptime BotCategory
monitoringRespects robots.txt
May not respect
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