What is LinkTiger?

LinkTiger is a bot in the monitoring and analytics bots category, operated by LinkTiger, Inc..

Bot name
LinkTiger
Operator
LinkTiger, Inc.
Type
Bot
Respects robots.txt
Not confirmed
robots.txt user agent
LinkTiger
Signs requests (Web Bot Auth)
No

About LinkTiger

LinkTiger crawls customer sites and reports broken links

Monitoring bots check uptime, performance and page changes on behalf of a site owner or a third party. Allow the services you run yourself and exclude them from analytics so they do not inflate page views.

LinkTiger user agent

LinkTiger 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 LinkTiger

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.

How to block LinkTiger in robots.txt

We have not confirmed whether LinkTiger 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.

Block LinkTiger from the whole site

User-agent: LinkTiger
Disallow: /

Block LinkTiger from some folders

User-agent: LinkTiger
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /search

Allow LinkTiger only on some folders

User-agent: LinkTiger
Allow: /blog/
Disallow: /

Allow LinkTiger and block other crawlers

User-agent: LinkTiger
Allow: /

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Things to know

  • Each host needs its own file. Rules on www.example.com do not apply to shop.example.com.
  • A crawler obeys only the most specific group that names it. Once you add a User-agent: LinkTiger group, LinkTiger ignores your User-agent: * rules, so repeat any that should still apply.
  • The user agent name is not case sensitive. We take LinkTiger from LinkTiger's user agent; check LinkTiger, Inc.'s own documentation if it publishes a different robots.txt name.
  • Crawlers cache robots.txt, so changes can take up to a day to apply. Disallow stops crawling but does not remove pages already collected or indexed.

Limits of robots.txt

  1. LinkTiger may not follow the rule. robots.txt is a request that nothing enforces, and we have not confirmed that LinkTiger follows it. Check your logs after adding a rule.
  2. The user agent could be fake. robots.txt matches the name a request claims. Anyone can send LinkTiger's user agent, and a scraper using it is not bound by LinkTiger, Inc.'s robots.txt policy. Only checking the source network tells a real LinkTiger from a fake one.

Treat robots.txt as a statement of your policy, and enforce it where requests arrive.

Who should care about LinkTiger

Publishers

Allow LinkTiger if it is a service you use, and keep its visits out of page views and ad requests either way.

Transfon Security for publishers

Media buyers and advertisers

LinkTiger is not a person. Exclude it from campaign and conversion data so reports reflect real visitors.

Transfon Security for advertisers

E-commerce

Allow LinkTiger only if it works for your store, and keep it away from cart and checkout.

Transfon Security for e-commerce

SaaS and APIs

If LinkTiger is a service you use, allow it on the endpoints it needs and block it elsewhere.

Transfon Security for SaaS and APIs

Block LinkTiger with Transfon Security

robots.txt is a request, not an enforcement. Transfon Security shows LinkTiger 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

Control LinkTiger on your site

  • See every LinkTiger visit and the pages it reads
  • Spot bots that fake trusted crawler names
  • Block, allow or rate limit LinkTiger with one rule
  • Works with or without robots.txt support

Frequently asked questions

What is LinkTiger?

LinkTiger is a bot in the monitoring and analytics bots category, operated by LinkTiger, Inc.. LinkTiger crawls customer sites and reports broken links

Does LinkTiger respect robots.txt?

We have not confirmed whether LinkTiger 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.

How do I block LinkTiger?

Add "User-agent: LinkTiger" followed by "Disallow: /" to the robots.txt file at the root of your site. To enforce it, block requests whose user agent contains "LinkTiger" at your WAF. In Transfon Security that is one User Agent block rule.

Is robots.txt enough to block LinkTiger?

No. robots.txt is voluntary, so LinkTiger may not follow it, and anyone can send LinkTiger's user agent, so a fake LinkTiger ignores your rule. Enforce the rule where requests arrive, at your WAF, and check the source network.

Should I block LinkTiger?

Monitoring bots check uptime, performance and page changes on behalf of a site owner or a third party. Allow the services you run yourself and exclude them from analytics so they do not inflate page views.

Related bots

All monitoring and analytics bots · Full bot directory

See Which Bots Visit Your Site

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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