ICC-Crawler
NICT •
Since 2016
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Official Docs
What is ICC-Crawler?
ICC-Crawler is operated by NICT (National Institute of Information and Communications Technology), a Japanese research institution. The bot collects web pages for research into advanced information processing, including multilingual natural language processing and machine translation. It respects robots.txt directives and is used strictly for academic research purposes.
User Agent String
ICC-Crawler/3.0 (Mozilla-compatible; ; https://ucri.nict.go.jp/en/icccrawler.html)
How to Control ICC-Crawler
Block Completely
To prevent ICC-Crawler from accessing your entire website, add this to your robots.txt file:
# Block ICC-Crawler
User-agent: ICC-Crawler
Disallow: /
Block Specific Directories
To restrict access to certain parts of your site while allowing others:
User-agent: ICC-Crawler
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: ICC-Crawler
Crawl-delay: 10
How to Verify ICC-Crawler
Verification Method:
Verify requests originate from NICT IP ranges
Verify requests originate from NICT IP ranges
Learn more in the official documentation.
Detection Patterns
Multiple ways to detect ICC-Crawler in your application:
Basic Pattern
/ICC\-Crawler/iStrict Pattern
/^ICC\-Crawler/3\.0 \(Mozilla\-compatible; ; https\://ucri\.nict\.go\.jp/en/icccrawler\.html\)$/Flexible Pattern
/ICC\-Crawler[\s\/]?[\d\.]*?/iVendor Match
/.*NICT.*ICC\-Crawler/iImplementation Examples
// PHP Detection for ICC-Crawler
function detect_icc_crawler() {
$user_agent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] ?? '';
$pattern = '/ICC\\-Crawler/i';
if (preg_match($pattern, $user_agent)) {
// Log the detection
error_log('ICC-Crawler 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($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']) . '.html');
exit;
}
return true;
}
return false;
}
# Python/Flask Detection for ICC-Crawler
import re
from flask import request, make_responsedef detect_icc_crawler():
user_agent = request.headers.get('User-Agent', '')
pattern = r'ICC-Crawler'
if re.search(pattern, user_agent, re.IGNORECASE):
# Create response with caching
response = make_response()
response.headers['Cache-Control'] = 'public, max-age=3600'
response.headers['X-Robots-Tag'] = 'noarchive'
return True
return False# Django Middleware
class ICCCrawlerMiddleware:
def __init__(self, get_response):
self.get_response = get_response
def __call__(self, request):
if self.detect_bot(request):
# Handle bot traffic
pass
return self.get_response(request)
// JavaScript/Node.js Detection for ICC-Crawler
const express = require('express');
const app = express();// Middleware to detect ICC-Crawler
function detectICCCrawler(req, res, next) {
const userAgent = req.headers['user-agent'] || '';
const pattern = /ICC-Crawler/i;
if (pattern.test(userAgent)) {
// Log bot detection
console.log('ICC-Crawler detected from IP:', req.ip);
// Set cache headers
res.set({
'Cache-Control': 'public, max-age=3600',
'X-Robots-Tag': 'noarchive'
});
// Mark request as bot
req.isBot = true;
req.botName = 'ICC-Crawler';
}
next();
}app.use(detectICCCrawler);
# Apache .htaccess rules for ICC-Crawler# Block completely
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ICC\-Crawler [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]# Or redirect to a static version
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ICC\-Crawler [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/static/
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /static/$1 [L]# Or set environment variable for PHP
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent "ICC\-Crawler" is_bot=1# Add cache headers for this bot
<If "%{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /ICC\-Crawler/i">
Header set Cache-Control "public, max-age=3600"
Header set X-Robots-Tag "noarchive"
</If>
# Nginx configuration for ICC-Crawler# Map user agent to variable
map $http_user_agent $is_icc_crawler {
default 0;
~*ICC\-Crawler 1;
}server {
# Block the bot completely
if ($is_icc_crawler) {
return 403;
}
# Or serve cached content
location / {
if ($is_icc_crawler) {
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_icc_crawler) {
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: ICC-Crawler
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: ICC-Crawler
Crawl-delay: 10
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /drafts/
Disallow: /preview/
Disallow: /*?replytocom=
Allow: /
SaaS/Application Configuration
User-agent: ICC-Crawler
Disallow: /app/
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /dashboard/
Disallow: /settings/
Allow: /
Allow: /pricing/
Allow: /features/
Allow: /docs/
Quick Reference
User Agent Match
ICC-CrawlerRobots.txt Name
ICC-CrawlerCategory
otherRespects robots.txt
Yes
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