TurnitinBot
Turnitin •
Since 2000
Quick Actions
Official Docs
What is TurnitinBot?
TurnitinBot is the web crawler for Turnitin, the widely-used plagiarism detection service in academic institutions. The bot crawls publicly accessible web content to build a database for comparing against submitted papers and assignments. This helps educators identify potential plagiarism by comparing student work against web sources. While some content creators block TurnitinBot to prevent their work from being in plagiarism databases, the service plays an important role in maintaining academic integrity.
User Agent String
TurnitinBot (https://turnitin.com/robot/crawlerinfo.html)
How to Control TurnitinBot
Block Completely
To prevent TurnitinBot from accessing your entire website, add this to your robots.txt file:
# Block TurnitinBot
User-agent: TurnitinBot
Disallow: /
Block Specific Directories
To restrict access to certain parts of your site while allowing others:
User-agent: TurnitinBot
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: TurnitinBot
Crawl-delay: 10
How to Verify TurnitinBot
Verification Method:
TurnitinBot user agent
TurnitinBot user agent
Learn more in the official documentation.
Detection Patterns
Multiple ways to detect TurnitinBot in your application:
Basic Pattern
/TurnitinBot/i
Strict Pattern
/^TurnitinBot \(https\://turnitin\.com/robot/crawlerinfo\.html\)$/
Flexible Pattern
/TurnitinBot[\s\/]?[\d\.]*?/i
Vendor Match
/.*Turnitin.*TurnitinBot/i
Implementation Examples
// PHP Detection for TurnitinBot
function detect_turnitinbot() {
$user_agent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] ?? '';
$pattern = '/TurnitinBot/i';
if (preg_match($pattern, $user_agent)) {
// Log the detection
error_log('TurnitinBot 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($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']) . '.html');
exit;
}
return true;
}
return false;
}
# Python/Flask Detection for TurnitinBot
import re
from flask import request, make_response
def detect_turnitinbot():
user_agent = request.headers.get('User-Agent', '')
pattern = r'TurnitinBot'
if re.search(pattern, user_agent, re.IGNORECASE):
# Create response with caching
response = make_response()
response.headers['Cache-Control'] = 'public, max-age=3600'
response.headers['X-Robots-Tag'] = 'noarchive'
return True
return False
# Django Middleware
class TurnitinBotMiddleware:
def __init__(self, get_response):
self.get_response = get_response
def __call__(self, request):
if self.detect_bot(request):
# Handle bot traffic
pass
return self.get_response(request)
// JavaScript/Node.js Detection for TurnitinBot
const express = require('express');
const app = express();
// Middleware to detect TurnitinBot
function detectTurnitinBot(req, res, next) {
const userAgent = req.headers['user-agent'] || '';
const pattern = /TurnitinBot/i;
if (pattern.test(userAgent)) {
// Log bot detection
console.log('TurnitinBot detected from IP:', req.ip);
// Set cache headers
res.set({
'Cache-Control': 'public, max-age=3600',
'X-Robots-Tag': 'noarchive'
});
// Mark request as bot
req.isBot = true;
req.botName = 'TurnitinBot';
}
next();
}
app.use(detectTurnitinBot);
# Apache .htaccess rules for TurnitinBot
# Block completely
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} TurnitinBot [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
# Or redirect to a static version
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} TurnitinBot [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/static/
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /static/$1 [L]
# Or set environment variable for PHP
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent "TurnitinBot" is_bot=1
# Add cache headers for this bot
<If "%{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /TurnitinBot/i">
Header set Cache-Control "public, max-age=3600"
Header set X-Robots-Tag "noarchive"
</If>
# Nginx configuration for TurnitinBot
# Map user agent to variable
map $http_user_agent $is_turnitinbot {
default 0;
~*TurnitinBot 1;
}
server {
# Block the bot completely
if ($is_turnitinbot) {
return 403;
}
# Or serve cached content
location / {
if ($is_turnitinbot) {
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_turnitinbot) {
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: TurnitinBot
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: TurnitinBot
Crawl-delay: 10
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /drafts/
Disallow: /preview/
Disallow: /*?replytocom=
Allow: /
SaaS/Application Configuration
User-agent: TurnitinBot
Disallow: /app/
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /dashboard/
Disallow: /settings/
Allow: /
Allow: /pricing/
Allow: /features/
Allow: /docs/
Quick Reference
User Agent Match
TurnitinBot
Robots.txt Name
TurnitinBot
Category
other
Respects robots.txt
Yes
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