Feedspot
Feedspot •
Since 2014
Quick Actions
Official Docs
What is Feedspot?
Feedspot is an RSS feed reader and content curation platform that aggregates content from blogs, news sites, YouTube channels, podcasts, and social media. The bot fetches subscribed feeds for its users and also crawls content for Feedspot's popular 'Top Blogs' and 'Top Podcasts' directories. It respects robots.txt directives.
User Agent String
Feedspot
How to Control Feedspot
Block Completely
To prevent Feedspot from accessing your entire website, add this to your robots.txt file:
# Block Feedspot
User-agent: Feedspot
Disallow: /
Block Specific Directories
To restrict access to certain parts of your site while allowing others:
User-agent: Feedspot
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: Feedspot
Crawl-delay: 10
How to Verify Feedspot
Verification Method:
Check user agent string for Feedspot identifier
Check user agent string for Feedspot identifier
Learn more in the official documentation.
Detection Patterns
Multiple ways to detect Feedspot in your application:
Basic Pattern
/Feedspot/iStrict Pattern
/^Feedspot$/Flexible Pattern
/Feedspot[\s\/]?[\d\.]*?/iVendor Match
/.*Feedspot.*Feedspot/iImplementation Examples
// PHP Detection for Feedspot
function detect_feedspot() {
$user_agent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] ?? '';
$pattern = '/Feedspot/i';
if (preg_match($pattern, $user_agent)) {
// Log the detection
error_log('Feedspot 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($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']) . '.html');
exit;
}
return true;
}
return false;
}
# Python/Flask Detection for Feedspot
import re
from flask import request, make_responsedef detect_feedspot():
user_agent = request.headers.get('User-Agent', '')
pattern = r'Feedspot'
if re.search(pattern, user_agent, re.IGNORECASE):
# Create response with caching
response = make_response()
response.headers['Cache-Control'] = 'public, max-age=3600'
response.headers['X-Robots-Tag'] = 'noarchive'
return True
return False# Django Middleware
class FeedspotMiddleware:
def __init__(self, get_response):
self.get_response = get_response
def __call__(self, request):
if self.detect_bot(request):
# Handle bot traffic
pass
return self.get_response(request)
// JavaScript/Node.js Detection for Feedspot
const express = require('express');
const app = express();// Middleware to detect Feedspot
function detectFeedspot(req, res, next) {
const userAgent = req.headers['user-agent'] || '';
const pattern = /Feedspot/i;
if (pattern.test(userAgent)) {
// Log bot detection
console.log('Feedspot detected from IP:', req.ip);
// Set cache headers
res.set({
'Cache-Control': 'public, max-age=3600',
'X-Robots-Tag': 'noarchive'
});
// Mark request as bot
req.isBot = true;
req.botName = 'Feedspot';
}
next();
}app.use(detectFeedspot);
# Apache .htaccess rules for Feedspot# Block completely
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Feedspot [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]# Or redirect to a static version
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Feedspot [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/static/
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /static/$1 [L]# Or set environment variable for PHP
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent "Feedspot" is_bot=1# Add cache headers for this bot
<If "%{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /Feedspot/i">
Header set Cache-Control "public, max-age=3600"
Header set X-Robots-Tag "noarchive"
</If>
# Nginx configuration for Feedspot# Map user agent to variable
map $http_user_agent $is_feedspot {
default 0;
~*Feedspot 1;
}server {
# Block the bot completely
if ($is_feedspot) {
return 403;
}
# Or serve cached content
location / {
if ($is_feedspot) {
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_feedspot) {
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: Feedspot
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: Feedspot
Crawl-delay: 10
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /drafts/
Disallow: /preview/
Disallow: /*?replytocom=
Allow: /
SaaS/Application Configuration
User-agent: Feedspot
Disallow: /app/
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /dashboard/
Disallow: /settings/
Allow: /
Allow: /pricing/
Allow: /features/
Allow: /docs/
Quick Reference
User Agent Match
FeedspotRobots.txt Name
FeedspotCategory
otherRespects robots.txt
Yes
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