Zoom
Zoom •
Since 2020
Quick Actions
Official Docs
What is Zoom?
ZoomBot generates link previews when URLs are shared in Zoom Chat during meetings or in persistent chat channels. As remote work and virtual meetings have become standard, Zoom's chat functionality has grown in importance for sharing resources and collaboration. The bot extracts metadata to create previews that help meeting participants quickly understand shared content without leaving the Zoom interface. This functionality enhances collaboration by providing context for shared links directly within the communication platform.
User Agent String
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_10_1) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/41.0.2227.1 Safari/537.36 ZoomBot
How to Control Zoom
Block Completely
To prevent Zoom from accessing your entire website, add this to your robots.txt file:
# Block Zoom
User-agent: ZoomBot
Disallow: /
Block Specific Directories
To restrict access to certain parts of your site while allowing others:
User-agent: ZoomBot
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: ZoomBot
Crawl-delay: 10
How to Verify Zoom
Verification Method:
Check for ZoomBot in user agent
Check for ZoomBot in user agent
Learn more in the official documentation.
Detection Patterns
Multiple ways to detect Zoom in your application:
Basic Pattern
/Zoom/i
Strict Pattern
/^Mozilla/5\.0 \(Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_10_1\) AppleWebKit/537\.36 \(KHTML, like Gecko\) Chrome/41\.0\.2227\.1 Safari/537\.36 ZoomBot$/
Flexible Pattern
/Zoom[\s\/]?[\d\.]*?/i
Vendor Match
/.*Zoom.*Zoom/i
Implementation Examples
// PHP Detection for Zoom
function detect_zoom() {
$user_agent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] ?? '';
$pattern = '/Zoom/i';
if (preg_match($pattern, $user_agent)) {
// Log the detection
error_log('Zoom 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($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']) . '.html');
exit;
}
return true;
}
return false;
}
# Python/Flask Detection for Zoom
import re
from flask import request, make_response
def detect_zoom():
user_agent = request.headers.get('User-Agent', '')
pattern = r'Zoom'
if re.search(pattern, user_agent, re.IGNORECASE):
# Create response with caching
response = make_response()
response.headers['Cache-Control'] = 'public, max-age=3600'
response.headers['X-Robots-Tag'] = 'noarchive'
return True
return False
# Django Middleware
class ZoomMiddleware:
def __init__(self, get_response):
self.get_response = get_response
def __call__(self, request):
if self.detect_bot(request):
# Handle bot traffic
pass
return self.get_response(request)
// JavaScript/Node.js Detection for Zoom
const express = require('express');
const app = express();
// Middleware to detect Zoom
function detectZoom(req, res, next) {
const userAgent = req.headers['user-agent'] || '';
const pattern = /Zoom/i;
if (pattern.test(userAgent)) {
// Log bot detection
console.log('Zoom detected from IP:', req.ip);
// Set cache headers
res.set({
'Cache-Control': 'public, max-age=3600',
'X-Robots-Tag': 'noarchive'
});
// Mark request as bot
req.isBot = true;
req.botName = 'Zoom';
}
next();
}
app.use(detectZoom);
# Apache .htaccess rules for Zoom
# Block completely
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Zoom [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
# Or redirect to a static version
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Zoom [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/static/
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /static/$1 [L]
# Or set environment variable for PHP
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent "Zoom" is_bot=1
# Add cache headers for this bot
<If "%{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /Zoom/i">
Header set Cache-Control "public, max-age=3600"
Header set X-Robots-Tag "noarchive"
</If>
# Nginx configuration for Zoom
# Map user agent to variable
map $http_user_agent $is_zoom {
default 0;
~*Zoom 1;
}
server {
# Block the bot completely
if ($is_zoom) {
return 403;
}
# Or serve cached content
location / {
if ($is_zoom) {
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_zoom) {
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: ZoomBot
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: ZoomBot
Crawl-delay: 10
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /drafts/
Disallow: /preview/
Disallow: /*?replytocom=
Allow: /
SaaS/Application Configuration
User-agent: ZoomBot
Disallow: /app/
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /dashboard/
Disallow: /settings/
Allow: /
Allow: /pricing/
Allow: /features/
Allow: /docs/
Quick Reference
User Agent Match
Zoom
Robots.txt Name
ZoomBot
Category
other
Respects robots.txt
Yes
Copied to clipboard!