Catchpoint
Catchpoint Systems •
Since 2010
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Official Docs
What is Catchpoint?
Catchpoint is an enterprise-grade synthetic monitoring platform that tests website performance, availability, and functionality from hundreds of global locations. The bot simulates real user interactions to measure page load times, API response times, and transaction success rates. Unlike search engine crawlers, Catchpoint targets specific URLs configured by its customers rather than performing broad web crawling.
User Agent String
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Windows NT 6.1; Catchpoint) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/79.0.3945.130 Safari/537.36
How to Control Catchpoint
Block Completely
To prevent Catchpoint from accessing your entire website, add this to your robots.txt file:
# Block Catchpoint
User-agent: Catchpoint
Disallow: /
Block Specific Directories
To restrict access to certain parts of your site while allowing others:
User-agent: Catchpoint
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: Catchpoint
Crawl-delay: 10
How to Verify Catchpoint
Verification Method:
Verify requests originate from known Catchpoint monitoring node IPs
Verify requests originate from known Catchpoint monitoring node IPs
Learn more in the official documentation.
Detection Patterns
Multiple ways to detect Catchpoint in your application:
Basic Pattern
/Catchpoint/i
Strict Pattern
/^Mozilla/5\.0 \(compatible; Windows NT 6\.1; Catchpoint\) AppleWebKit/537\.36 \(KHTML, like Gecko\) Chrome/79\.0\.3945\.130 Safari/537\.36$/
Flexible Pattern
/Catchpoint[\s\/]?[\d\.]*?/i
Vendor Match
/.*Catchpoint Systems.*Catchpoint/i
Implementation Examples
// PHP Detection for Catchpoint
function detect_catchpoint() {
$user_agent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] ?? '';
$pattern = '/Catchpoint/i';
if (preg_match($pattern, $user_agent)) {
// Log the detection
error_log('Catchpoint 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($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']) . '.html');
exit;
}
return true;
}
return false;
}
# Python/Flask Detection for Catchpoint
import re
from flask import request, make_response
def detect_catchpoint():
user_agent = request.headers.get('User-Agent', '')
pattern = r'Catchpoint'
if re.search(pattern, user_agent, re.IGNORECASE):
# Create response with caching
response = make_response()
response.headers['Cache-Control'] = 'public, max-age=3600'
response.headers['X-Robots-Tag'] = 'noarchive'
return True
return False
# Django Middleware
class CatchpointMiddleware:
def __init__(self, get_response):
self.get_response = get_response
def __call__(self, request):
if self.detect_bot(request):
# Handle bot traffic
pass
return self.get_response(request)
// JavaScript/Node.js Detection for Catchpoint
const express = require('express');
const app = express();
// Middleware to detect Catchpoint
function detectCatchpoint(req, res, next) {
const userAgent = req.headers['user-agent'] || '';
const pattern = /Catchpoint/i;
if (pattern.test(userAgent)) {
// Log bot detection
console.log('Catchpoint detected from IP:', req.ip);
// Set cache headers
res.set({
'Cache-Control': 'public, max-age=3600',
'X-Robots-Tag': 'noarchive'
});
// Mark request as bot
req.isBot = true;
req.botName = 'Catchpoint';
}
next();
}
app.use(detectCatchpoint);
# Apache .htaccess rules for Catchpoint
# Block completely
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Catchpoint [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
# Or redirect to a static version
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Catchpoint [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/static/
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /static/$1 [L]
# Or set environment variable for PHP
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent "Catchpoint" is_bot=1
# Add cache headers for this bot
<If "%{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /Catchpoint/i">
Header set Cache-Control "public, max-age=3600"
Header set X-Robots-Tag "noarchive"
</If>
# Nginx configuration for Catchpoint
# Map user agent to variable
map $http_user_agent $is_catchpoint {
default 0;
~*Catchpoint 1;
}
server {
# Block the bot completely
if ($is_catchpoint) {
return 403;
}
# Or serve cached content
location / {
if ($is_catchpoint) {
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_catchpoint) {
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: Catchpoint
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: Catchpoint
Crawl-delay: 10
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /drafts/
Disallow: /preview/
Disallow: /*?replytocom=
Allow: /
SaaS/Application Configuration
User-agent: Catchpoint
Disallow: /app/
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /dashboard/
Disallow: /settings/
Allow: /
Allow: /pricing/
Allow: /features/
Allow: /docs/
Quick Reference
User Agent Match
Catchpoint
Robots.txt Name
Catchpoint
Category
monitoring
Respects robots.txt
May not respect
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