GhostExplore is a bot in the content aggregators category, operated by Ghost.
An aggregator service for websites powered by ghost.org
Aggregators collect articles and links from many sites to build news feeds, read later apps and discovery services. Some send referral traffic, others republish your content. Check what each one does with your pages before allowing it.
GhostExplore identifies itself with this user agent string:
GhostExplore/1.0 (+https://explore.ghost.org/bot)Anyone 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 GhostExplore 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: GhostExplore Disallow: /
User-agent: GhostExplore Disallow: /private/ Disallow: /search
User-agent: GhostExplore Allow: /blog/ Disallow: /
User-agent: GhostExplore Allow: / User-agent: * Disallow: /
User-agent: GhostExplore group, GhostExplore ignores your User-agent: * rules, so repeat any that should still apply.GhostExplore from GhostExplore's user agent; check Ghost'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.
GhostExplore fetches pages when your links are shared or syndicated. Keep it allowed so previews and feeds work, but leave it out of page views and ad requests.
Transfon Security for publishersWhen ads or posts are shared, GhostExplore fetches the landing page. Those hits are not clicks, so keep them out of campaign reports.
Transfon Security for advertisersProduct links shared in chats and feeds are fetched by GhostExplore. Keep it allowed so previews show the right image and price.
Transfon Security for e-commerceAllow GhostExplore on public pages so shared links preview well, and keep it off the app.
Transfon Security for SaaS and APIsrobots.txt is a request, not an enforcement. Transfon Security shows GhostExplore 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
GhostExplore is a bot in the content aggregators category, operated by Ghost. An aggregator service for websites powered by ghost.org
We have not confirmed whether GhostExplore 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: GhostExplore" followed by "Disallow: /" to the robots.txt file at the root of your site. To enforce it, block requests whose user agent contains "GhostExplore" at your WAF. In Transfon Security that is one User Agent block rule.
No. robots.txt is voluntary, so GhostExplore may not follow it, and anyone can send GhostExplore's user agent, so a fake GhostExplore ignores your rule. Enforce the rule where requests arrive, at your WAF, and check the source network.
Aggregators collect articles and links from many sites to build news feeds, read later apps and discovery services. Some send referral traffic, others republish your content. Check what each one does with your pages before allowing it.
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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