IbouBot
Ibou •
Web Crawler
What is IbouBot?
Ibou says its crawler discovers public pages and indexes them for its search engine, with links back to sources. The operator says it does not use the crawled data to train AI models. IbouBot follows robots.txt and Crawl-delay, and the company publishes reverse-DNS and IP-range checks for verifying traffic.
User Agent String
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; IbouBot/1.0; [email protected]; +https://ibou.io/iboubot.html)
How to Control IbouBot
Block Completely
To prevent IbouBot from accessing your entire website, add this to your robots.txt file:
# Block IbouBot
User-agent: IbouBot
Disallow: /
Block Specific Directories
To restrict access to certain parts of your site while allowing others:
User-agent: IbouBot
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: IbouBot
Crawl-delay: 10
How to Verify IbouBot
Verification Method:
Forward-confirm the source IP's reverse DNS under ibou.io, or compare it with Ibou's current published IP ranges; a user-agent match is insufficient.
Forward-confirm the source IP's reverse DNS under ibou.io, or compare it with Ibou's current published IP ranges; a user-agent match is insufficient.
Learn more in the official documentation.
Detection Patterns
Multiple ways to detect IbouBot in your application:
Basic Pattern
/IbouBot/i
Strict Pattern
/^Mozilla\/5\.0 \(compatible; IbouBot\/1\.0; \+bot@ibou\.io; \+https\:\/\/ibou\.io\/iboubot\.html\)$/
Flexible Pattern
/IbouBot[\s\/]?[\d\.]*?/i
Vendor Match
/.*Ibou.*IbouBot/i
Implementation Examples
// PHP Detection for IbouBot
function detect_iboubot() {
$user_agent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] ?? '';
$pattern = '/IbouBot/i';
if (preg_match($pattern, $user_agent)) {
// Log the detection
error_log('IbouBot 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($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']) . '.html');
exit;
}
return true;
}
return false;
}
# Python/Flask Detection for IbouBot
import re
from flask import request, make_response
def detect_iboubot():
user_agent = request.headers.get('User-Agent', '')
pattern = r'IbouBot'
if re.search(pattern, user_agent, re.IGNORECASE):
# Create response with caching
response = make_response()
response.headers['Cache-Control'] = 'public, max-age=3600'
response.headers['X-Robots-Tag'] = 'noarchive'
return True
return False
# Django Middleware
class iboubotMiddleware:
def __init__(self, get_response):
self.get_response = get_response
def __call__(self, request):
if self.detect_bot(request):
# Handle bot traffic
pass
return self.get_response(request)
// JavaScript/Node.js Detection for IbouBot
const express = require('express');
const app = express();
// Middleware to detect IbouBot
function detect_iboubot(req, res, next) {
const userAgent = req.headers['user-agent'] || '';
const pattern = /IbouBot/i;
if (pattern.test(userAgent)) {
// Log bot detection
console.log('IbouBot detected from IP:', req.ip);
// Set cache headers
res.set({
'Cache-Control': 'public, max-age=3600',
'X-Robots-Tag': 'noarchive'
});
// Mark request as bot
req.isBot = true;
req.botName = 'IbouBot';
}
next();
}
app.use(detect_iboubot);
# Apache .htaccess rules for IbouBot
# Block completely
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} IbouBot [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
# Or redirect to a static version
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} IbouBot [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/static/
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /static/$1 [L]
# Or set environment variable for PHP
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent "IbouBot" is_bot=1
# Add cache headers for this bot
<If "%{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /IbouBot/i">
Header set Cache-Control "public, max-age=3600"
Header set X-Robots-Tag "noarchive"
</If>
# Nginx configuration for IbouBot
# Map user agent to variable
map $http_user_agent $is_iboubot {
default 0;
~*IbouBot 1;
}
server {
# Block the bot completely
if ($is_iboubot) {
return 403;
}
# Or serve cached content
location / {
if ($is_iboubot) {
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_iboubot) {
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: IbouBot
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: IbouBot
Crawl-delay: 10
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /drafts/
Disallow: /preview/
Disallow: /*?replytocom=
Allow: /
SaaS/Application Configuration
User-agent: IbouBot
Disallow: /app/
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /dashboard/
Disallow: /settings/
Allow: /
Allow: /pricing/
Allow: /features/
Allow: /docs/
Quick Reference
User Agent Match
IbouBot
Robots.txt Name
IbouBot
Category
search
Respects robots.txt
Yes
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