CognitiveSEOCrawler is a bot in the SEO crawlers category, operated by cognitive SEO Internet Marketing Tools..
CognitiveSEO is an SEO toolset that crawls the web and analyzes links.
SEO crawlers map links, keywords and technical issues for SEO tools and backlink databases. They help the tool's customers, often your competitors, rather than you. Rate limit or block the ones you do not use.
CognitiveSEOCrawler identifies itself with this user agent string:
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/76.0.3809.87 Safari/537.36 - James BOT - WebCrawler http://cognitiveseo.com/bot.htmlAnyone can copy a user agent string. Transfon Security also checks where each request comes from, so a request that claims to be a known crawler but comes from the wrong network is treated as a fake, not as the real crawler.
We have not confirmed whether CognitiveSEOCrawler follows robots.txt. Add a rule, then check your logs to see that it stopped. robots.txt is a plain text file at the root of your domain, such as https://example.com/robots.txt.
User-agent: James Disallow: /
User-agent: James Disallow: /private/ Disallow: /search
User-agent: James Allow: /blog/ Disallow: /
User-agent: James Allow: / User-agent: * Disallow: /
User-agent: James group, CognitiveSEOCrawler ignores your User-agent: * rules, so repeat any that should still apply.James from CognitiveSEOCrawler's user agent; check cognitive SEO Internet Marketing Tools.'s own documentation if it publishes a different robots.txt name.Treat robots.txt as a statement of your policy, and enforce it where requests arrive.
CognitiveSEOCrawler works for an SEO tool's customers, often your competitors. It adds server load without readers, so rate limit or block it unless you use the tool.
Transfon Security for publishersSEO crawlers map landing pages and links for competitor research. Keep CognitiveSEOCrawler's visits out of campaign data.
Transfon Security for advertisersCognitiveSEOCrawler can map your catalogue, prices and site structure for competitors. Block it unless you use the tool yourself.
Transfon Security for e-commerceAllow CognitiveSEOCrawler only if your team uses the tool; otherwise rate limit it on docs and marketing pages.
Transfon Security for SaaS and APIsrobots.txt is a request, not an enforcement. Transfon Security shows CognitiveSEOCrawler by name in the Top Bots report, so you can see how often it visits and which pages it reads. Block or allow it with a User Agent rule, or slow it down with a rate limit decision rule.
Transfon Security
CognitiveSEOCrawler is a bot in the SEO crawlers category, operated by cognitive SEO Internet Marketing Tools.. CognitiveSEO is an SEO toolset that crawls the web and analyzes links.
We have not confirmed whether CognitiveSEOCrawler follows robots.txt. Add a robots.txt rule, then check your logs to see that it stopped, and block it by user agent if it did not.
Add "User-agent: James" followed by "Disallow: /" to the robots.txt file at the root of your site. To enforce it, block requests whose user agent contains "James BOT" at your WAF. In Transfon Security that is one User Agent block rule.
No. robots.txt is voluntary, so CognitiveSEOCrawler may not follow it, and anyone can send CognitiveSEOCrawler's user agent, so a fake CognitiveSEOCrawler ignores your rule. Enforce the rule where requests arrive, at your WAF, and check the source network.
SEO crawlers map links, keywords and technical issues for SEO tools and backlink databases. They help the tool's customers, often your competitors, rather than you. Rate limit or block the ones you do not use.
Transfon Security identifies every bot in this directory in your traffic reports, flags fake search crawlers, and lets you allow, block or rate limit each bot.
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