DesearchBot
Desearch •
Web Crawler
What is DesearchBot?
Desearch says its crawler fetches public pages so people and AI agents can find them through its search service, with source attribution in answers. Its crawler documentation says it follows robots.txt, including Crawl-delay, and uses plain HTTP GET rather than JavaScript rendering. Requests are signed, giving site owners a stronger identity check than the user-agent string.
User Agent String
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; DesearchBot/1.0; +https://www.desearch.ai/crawler)
How to Control DesearchBot
Block Completely
To prevent DesearchBot from accessing your entire website, add this to your robots.txt file:
# Block DesearchBot
User-agent: DesearchBot
Disallow: /
Block Specific Directories
To restrict access to certain parts of your site while allowing others:
User-agent: DesearchBot
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: DesearchBot
Crawl-delay: 10
How to Verify DesearchBot
Verification Method:
Validate the HTTP Message Signature against Desearch's published Ed25519 key directory; a user-agent string alone proves nothing.
Validate the HTTP Message Signature against Desearch's published Ed25519 key directory; a user-agent string alone proves nothing.
Learn more in the official documentation.
Detection Patterns
Multiple ways to detect DesearchBot in your application:
Basic Pattern
/DesearchBot/i
Strict Pattern
/^Mozilla\/5\.0 \(compatible; DesearchBot\/1\.0; \+https\:\/\/www\.desearch\.ai\/crawler\)$/
Flexible Pattern
/DesearchBot[\s\/]?[\d\.]*?/i
Vendor Match
/.*Desearch.*DesearchBot/i
Implementation Examples
// PHP Detection for DesearchBot
function detect_desearchbot() {
$user_agent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] ?? '';
$pattern = '/DesearchBot/i';
if (preg_match($pattern, $user_agent)) {
// Log the detection
error_log('DesearchBot 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($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']) . '.html');
exit;
}
return true;
}
return false;
}
# Python/Flask Detection for DesearchBot
import re
from flask import request, make_response
def detect_desearchbot():
user_agent = request.headers.get('User-Agent', '')
pattern = r'DesearchBot'
if re.search(pattern, user_agent, re.IGNORECASE):
# Create response with caching
response = make_response()
response.headers['Cache-Control'] = 'public, max-age=3600'
response.headers['X-Robots-Tag'] = 'noarchive'
return True
return False
# Django Middleware
class desearchbotMiddleware:
def __init__(self, get_response):
self.get_response = get_response
def __call__(self, request):
if self.detect_bot(request):
# Handle bot traffic
pass
return self.get_response(request)
// JavaScript/Node.js Detection for DesearchBot
const express = require('express');
const app = express();
// Middleware to detect DesearchBot
function detect_desearchbot(req, res, next) {
const userAgent = req.headers['user-agent'] || '';
const pattern = /DesearchBot/i;
if (pattern.test(userAgent)) {
// Log bot detection
console.log('DesearchBot detected from IP:', req.ip);
// Set cache headers
res.set({
'Cache-Control': 'public, max-age=3600',
'X-Robots-Tag': 'noarchive'
});
// Mark request as bot
req.isBot = true;
req.botName = 'DesearchBot';
}
next();
}
app.use(detect_desearchbot);
# Apache .htaccess rules for DesearchBot
# Block completely
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} DesearchBot [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
# Or redirect to a static version
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} DesearchBot [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/static/
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /static/$1 [L]
# Or set environment variable for PHP
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent "DesearchBot" is_bot=1
# Add cache headers for this bot
<If "%{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /DesearchBot/i">
Header set Cache-Control "public, max-age=3600"
Header set X-Robots-Tag "noarchive"
</If>
# Nginx configuration for DesearchBot
# Map user agent to variable
map $http_user_agent $is_desearchbot {
default 0;
~*DesearchBot 1;
}
server {
# Block the bot completely
if ($is_desearchbot) {
return 403;
}
# Or serve cached content
location / {
if ($is_desearchbot) {
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_desearchbot) {
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 | Allow | Essential for product visibility in search results |
| Blog/News | Allow | Increases content reach and discoverability |
| SaaS Application | Block | No benefit for application interfaces; preserve resources |
| Documentation | Allow | Improves documentation discoverability for developers |
| Corporate Site | Allow | Allow for public pages, block sensitive areas like intranets |
Advanced robots.txt Configurations
E-commerce Site Configuration
User-agent: DesearchBot
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: DesearchBot
Crawl-delay: 10
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /drafts/
Disallow: /preview/
Disallow: /*?replytocom=
Allow: /
SaaS/Application Configuration
User-agent: DesearchBot
Disallow: /app/
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /dashboard/
Disallow: /settings/
Allow: /
Allow: /pricing/
Allow: /features/
Allow: /docs/
Quick Reference
User Agent Match
DesearchBot
Robots.txt Name
DesearchBot
Category
search
Respects robots.txt
Yes
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