Diffbot-User

Operator

Diffbot

robots.txt token

Diffbot-User

Follows robots.txt

Yes, according to ai.robots.txt.

In Vireo

Excluded, reported under AI crawlers

What it does

Diffbot-User is used by requests originating on behalf of a human user browsing a URL using Diffbot software, in response to their input. Documented by Diffbot at https://docs.diffbot.com/docs/does-crawl-respect-robotstxt

ai.robots.txt describes its function as: AI Assistants

Source: ai.robots.txt.

Crawl frequency, per ai.robots.txt: Only when prompted by a user.

How to block or allow Diffbot-User

Add a group for its token to the robots.txt file at the root of your site. To keep it out of the whole site:

User-agent: Diffbot-User
Disallow: /

To let it crawl everything, use an empty Disallow: or Allow: / instead. WordPress serves a virtual robots.txt that many SEO plugins let you edit. A real robots.txt file uploaded to the site root takes its place.

robots.txt is a request, so it only works on crawlers that honour it. A bot that ignores it has to be blocked at the server or firewall, by user agent or IP address.

How Vireo counts Diffbot-User

When a request's user agent contains Diffbot-User, Vireo keeps it out of your pageviews and visitors and counts them on its bot report under AI crawlers, so you can see how much it left out rather than wonder why your server logs show more traffic.

Because it's an AI crawler, its requests also count toward the pages AI crawlers took, which Vireo shows next to the readers AI assistants sent back. See how the AI assistants card works.

Checked by running Vireo Analytics' own bot filter over the bot's name.

Sources

• ai.robots.txt (MIT)