What is MirrorWebCrawler?

MirrorWebCrawler is a bot in the content aggregators category, operated by MirrorWeb Ltd.

Bot name
MirrorWebCrawler
Operator
MirrorWeb Ltd
Type
Bot
Respects robots.txt
Not confirmed
robots.txt user agent
mirrorweb
Signs requests (Web Bot Auth)
No

About MirrorWebCrawler

We are a commercial web archiving supplier providing archival solutions for the financial and public sector.

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.

MirrorWebCrawler user agent

MirrorWebCrawler identifies itself with this user agent string:

  • Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/78.0.3904.97 Safari/537.36 +https://www.mirrorweb.com

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 MirrorWebCrawler in robots.txt

We have not confirmed whether MirrorWebCrawler 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 MirrorWebCrawler from the whole site

User-agent: mirrorweb
Disallow: /

Block MirrorWebCrawler from some folders

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

Allow MirrorWebCrawler only on some folders

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

Allow MirrorWebCrawler and block other crawlers

User-agent: mirrorweb
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: mirrorweb group, MirrorWebCrawler ignores your User-agent: * rules, so repeat any that should still apply.
  • The user agent name is not case sensitive. We take mirrorweb from MirrorWebCrawler's user agent; check MirrorWeb Ltd'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. MirrorWebCrawler may not follow the rule. robots.txt is a request that nothing enforces, and we have not confirmed that MirrorWebCrawler 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 MirrorWebCrawler's user agent, and a scraper using it is not bound by MirrorWeb Ltd's robots.txt policy. Only checking the source network tells a real MirrorWebCrawler from a fake one.

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

Who should care about MirrorWebCrawler

Publishers

MirrorWebCrawler 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 publishers

Media buyers and advertisers

When ads or posts are shared, MirrorWebCrawler fetches the landing page. Those hits are not clicks, so keep them out of campaign reports.

Transfon Security for advertisers

E-commerce

Product links shared in chats and feeds are fetched by MirrorWebCrawler. Keep it allowed so previews show the right image and price.

Transfon Security for e-commerce

SaaS and APIs

Allow MirrorWebCrawler on public pages so shared links preview well, and keep it off the app.

Transfon Security for SaaS and APIs

Block MirrorWebCrawler with Transfon Security

robots.txt is a request, not an enforcement. Transfon Security shows MirrorWebCrawler 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 MirrorWebCrawler on your site

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

Frequently asked questions

What is MirrorWebCrawler?

MirrorWebCrawler is a bot in the content aggregators category, operated by MirrorWeb Ltd. We are a commercial web archiving supplier providing archival solutions for the financial and public sector.

Does MirrorWebCrawler respect robots.txt?

We have not confirmed whether MirrorWebCrawler 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 MirrorWebCrawler?

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

Is robots.txt enough to block MirrorWebCrawler?

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

Should I block MirrorWebCrawler?

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.

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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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