Screaming Frog is a bot in the SEO crawlers category, operated by Screaming Frog.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a desktop crawler that SEO teams run to audit sites for broken links, redirects, metadata and other technical issues.
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.
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 Screaming Frog 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: Screaming Disallow: /
User-agent: Screaming Disallow: /private/ Disallow: /search
User-agent: Screaming Allow: /blog/ Disallow: /
User-agent: Screaming Allow: / User-agent: * Disallow: /
User-agent: Screaming group, Screaming Frog ignores your User-agent: * rules, so repeat any that should still apply.Screaming from Screaming Frog's user agent; check Screaming Frog'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.
Screaming Frog 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 Screaming Frog's visits out of campaign data.
Transfon Security for advertisersScreaming Frog can map your catalogue, prices and site structure for competitors. Block it unless you use the tool yourself.
Transfon Security for e-commerceAllow Screaming Frog 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 Screaming Frog 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
Screaming Frog is a bot in the SEO crawlers category, operated by Screaming Frog. Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a desktop crawler that SEO teams run to audit sites for broken links, redirects, metadata and other technical issues.
We have not confirmed whether Screaming Frog 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: Screaming" followed by "Disallow: /" to the robots.txt file at the root of your site. To enforce it, block requests whose user agent contains "Screaming Frog SEO Spider" at your WAF. In Transfon Security that is one User Agent block rule.
No. robots.txt is voluntary, so Screaming Frog may not follow it, and anyone can send Screaming Frog's user agent, so a fake Screaming Frog 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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