ExaSearchBot

Operator

Exa

robots.txt token

ExaSearchBot

In Vireo

Excluded, reported under Other bots

What it does

ExaSearchBot is a web crawler operated by Exa that discovers and indexes public web pages so their content can be found, retrieved, and cited through Exa.

ai.robots.txt describes its function as: AI Search Crawlers

Source: ai.robots.txt.

How to block or allow ExaSearchBot

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: ExaSearchBot
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 ExaSearchBot

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

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

Sources

• ai.robots.txt (MIT)